Blog Comments

I just read this a couple of great posts about blog comments and whether they are a good thing or not. Firstly, read the posts here and here.

I think that blog comments can be a good thing, but also a very evil thing. Let's start with the positives. Blog comments are a good thing when discussion about a topic ensues and parties with diverse knowledge and background on the topic contribute information that is both interesting and adds to the original post. I've seen this happen quite a lot on the food blog that I write and many food blogs that I read. The food community encourage each other to try new things and give helpful hints on things to try or recommendations on places to eat. I find it is a very supportive group and comments on those blogs are add real value to each post.

The places where blog comments are evil is when a post presents a personal view of a topic by the author (which may be conservative or extreme) and the author gets attacked personally for expressing an opinion. The anonymity factor of blog comments (online forums also fall into this category) means that people feel like they can be outright rude without retribution. You wouldn't swear at people in real life for giving an opinion that you disagreed with, but with anonymity comes power. It gets really ugly sometimes and people are slanging it out very fiercely. I've only felt this on a very small scale. I posted some discussion topics on some forums and gave an opinion and asked people for theirs. Most people discussed the topic, but there were a few who went way off tangent and attacked me over other things which aren't even related to the post. There are always a***oles in this world, who feel like they have the right to attack others. It's just that in cyberspace, that is much easier to do with little consequences.

It's in instances where people start attacking each other that comments are a total waste of time. The idiots will always dominate the comments and no real discussion can take place. It's always the case that a few rotten apples ruin the barrel of apples. You can try to curb this by moderating comment, but there is an equally strong argument against doing that. Moderating comments takes a lot of time, and the mere fact that you control what others says means that discussion is already skewed to what you want, no matter how fairly you think you are being.

It's a tough topic to decide whether blog comments are useful. Like another writer wrote, some stories don't require comments. Breaking news stories really don't require people adding comments like "That's so sad" or "OMG". Those stories speak for themselves and people can decide how they should react themselves. Even opinion based stories may not necessarily require comments. In the days of old, a print story was just that, a printed story that you read. You could discuss it with your own friends, but the writer didn't need to hear back from you to have a satisfied feeling about writing a well researched story. They have done their part by imparting that knowledge out into the world, and how others want to use it is up to them.