No Comment
I recently had a conversation with a family member about the utility of blog comments. Personally, I can not recall very many comments that shed any more light on the discussion. The ones I do remember, I remember because the host blog promoted them to "post". The reason it came back to me was Forbes put together a "Best of the web" list of political blogs, and sidebar notables Powerline and Michelle Malkin (who is on vacation) were both criticized for not having comments. The Forbes report said in part
WORST[part of powerline]: No comments. Power Line could be as big as Daily Kos, but by not giving readers a voice, it gets about a tenth the traffic.Is it a good thing that Daily Kos is the gold standard in blogging? Perhaps success is measured in more than "hits". It reminds me of a Chinese proverb:
Elephant tusks cannot grow out of a dog's mouth.
posted by Roy at 15:54
2 Comments:
The advantage of the Internet over other mediums is the ease of two-way communications. Print and broadcast have limited ability to engage the audience.
Methinks the reason talk radio did catch on was that it had a nascent two-way communication. It allowed reflection of the audience's anger.
Not using the two-way capabilities of the Internet would be like having a TV program without color or sound.
Unless there's a specific reason not to, doesn't it make sense to use the full capability of the medium?
PS I started a new blog, Proviso Probe. It's mission is "to cover Proviso Township public officials and the community."
I disagree on many points. The advantage of the internet is transparancy; not communication. You can link to al the sources you used giving the reader the ability to research your opinion to any desired depth.
Talk radio became popular because of the percieved liberal bias in corporate media, and has very little to do with your vague generalizations about audience attitudes.
The specific reason not to allow comments is that it adds very little to the discourse, and in most instances (over 99% IMO) is a large distraction.
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