Late to this year’s party, early to next — Comments

I decided early on that I wanted to wait until after this year comment-a-thon ended (how many years has it been running now?), until I voiced my opinion on the subject.

I don’t have comments, I don’t think I ever will in the current state of things.

I’m not interested in starting a community as some suggested comments do. I already have a community: Twitter; why would I want to create some sham of a community that exists only on my site, when I could exploit an already awesome community of diverse people on Twitter? What I want to do, is write, and I’d like people to read.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want responses to my posts. But again, why create my own, when several very capable (and some not) services already exist?

Ignoring load time of additional comments (and how ugly a stream of comments looks), I don’t want my writing accompanied by their writing. On the flip-side, as MG Seigler said, why would they want their writing as a measly comment on my blog?

Both sides of the comments argument have their evangelists, and I certainly do not subscribe to either. These fanboys (used ironically) try to impose their opinion on others. But comments are not something an outsider should or could dictate, or expect. If Gruber doesn’t want comments and/or doesn’t want to moderate them, or if techcrunch is willing to put up with such a large amount of trolling comments because they think the thoughtful comments do bring value, that’s their call. I involves balancing their own time and/or money, ideology, Aesthstics; being aware of the demographics of their readers; and how committed they are to the idea of their site as a community. The only people who can make this decision, are those intimately involved in their own site, not outsiders.

Instead of saying why comments are good or bad, say why they are for your site. There are, of course, many that do this, but it’s the overly vocal that impose their view that seem to get the floor most of the time.

What I want for Macchiato Man, is not a community. It’s merely my writings. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want a engagement, but the way I want that, is off site. Send me an email; contact me on Twitter; but preferably, write your own blog on it refuting or agreeing with me. Whichever method is dictated my context, these contexts should be obvious, and I don’t think I need to get into them. Hosting is cheap, so are domains, but even cheaper are free blogs. Clearly these people have opinions, voice them! It’s so easy to get a free blog, so there’s no excuse, especially with Twitter, and emails.

The fact that Macchiato Man is a tech blog is also a deciding factor for me. If I was writing about design (even typography!), flower arrangements, or sweet foods, I doubt any of the responses would get near the average comments on TechCrunch (etc.). The tech community, possibly equaled only by politics and sports, is extremely quick to react without thought, gets easily riled up, and deliberately riles people up; this has to play in whether I want comments or not.

However futile, I think encouraging people to write their own articles on their own blogs forces them to sit back and think – be it temporarily – about what they’re writing. Again possible futile, I want to encourage people to actually write in the first place.

The more people that write the better, comments don’t contribute to the world, or the internet as a whole. They are always subordinate to what they are commenting on; a blog article can live forever, and can contribute as the dominant document.

Comments are inherently short lived, they live and they die. They’ll, exceptions notwithstanding, never be resurrected. A long dead article can be.

And that is why I won’t have comments on Macchiato Man.