Commenting not good.
As
I have made clear over the years, I am opposed to blog comments. I find it ironic that a “movement” that is
typically (and justifiably) skeptical of democracy and of mass/quantity, and
which believes in hierarchy and the importance of elite quality, is so tolerant
of the idea that the imbecilic ramblings of any idiot with an Internet connection
is the equal of the carefully considered writing of a main blog post.
Of
course, there are some positives about allowing commenting. Every once in a while, a comment is interesting
and useful. Commenting can create a
sense of community (although community is more properly built in real-life,
rather than online), and can project a sense of “power,” in that it shows that
the blog has built up a cohort of followers.
Further, sometimes the rare thoughtful commentator can be recruited to
be a blogger themselves.
But
the negatives outweigh these putative positives. The majority of comments tend to be of poor
quality, and drag down the tone of the blog and taint the original post with
the whiff of typical “movement” stupidity and freakishness. At best, the comments will be mediocre rambling;
at worst, they will be factually incorrect, illogical, destructive to the memes
promoted by the post and by the blog, incitement to “flame wars,” or, at an
extreme, ripe for trolling or even the more serious problem of Sunstein-style “cognitive
infiltration.” It is a rare event that a
comments thread elevates the discussion of the original post; it is a very
common event that the comments thread degrades the post, and may “turn off”
potential readers and recruits.
Moderation
is an option, but that has costs: quality moderation is time-consuming, it
opens the moderator up to accusations of bias (e.g., only allowing comments
supportive of one point of view), and a skilled and determined
troll/infiltrator can do a lot of damage to the blog and its objectives before
the moderator “wises up” to what is going on. I’ve seen all of this play out before: unmoderated commenting is a disaster that ruins the blog through a form
of “Gresham’s Law” – the bad commentators drive out the good; moderated
commenting is a bit better, but it’s very difficult to maintain the proper control,
particularly when confronted with those skilled at disruption.
One
particularly asinine argument I have heard is: “Well, if people don’t like the
comments, they don’t have to read them, they can just ignore them and stop
complaining.” Certainly, any individual
can ignore the comments. But they will
still be there – and our target audience will be reading them; after all, the
purpose for having the comments is for them to be read, isn’t it? When destructive comments go unanswered they
attain a degree of legitimacy. It is
obvious that they cannot be left ignored (and certainly not by the person who
wrote the original post!) because uncorrected error may eventually be accepted
as truth. Therefore, ignoring comments is
obviously not a stable option, and one can question the intellectual
seriousness of anyone who asserts otherwise.
On
balance, therefore, I see commenting as a net negative. Possibly, with very strict moderation this
could be overcome, if the moderator is able to effectively deal with the
potential problems of moderation listed above.
But, even so, if time is limited, and moderation is not feasible, better
to have no comments than the type of sewer flow that characterizes unmoderated
commenting on some blogs.
One
other possible solution is to have multiple blogs – a “sandbox blog” for the
nitwits, nutcases, and trolls to comment on, unmoderated, to their heart’s
content, and a serious blog with no
comments (or very strictly moderated) at which the important matters are
discussed. Trying to mix important discussion
with unmoderated commenting will lead to the “behavioral sink” taking the blog
down the drain. It’s a terrible mistake.