Friday, January 20, 2006

Comments on comments Blog "comment" systems came up in our class discussion of weblogs, Wikipedia and other kinds of websites this week. How's this for just-in-time news? The Washington Post has turned off the comments on one of its blogs. Here are some reports: 'Wash Post' Web Editor Explains Decision to Shut Off Blog Comments (Editor & Publisher) Paper Closes Reader Comments on Blog, Citing Vitriol (NY Times) Jay Rosen: Transparency at the Post... "We're going backwards." I mentioned that comments can be a large part of the blog-reading experience, creating much more of a discussion than a newspaper's "letters to the editor" page. Examples: When John Perry Barlow took most of 2005 off from blogging, his readers kept the discussion going without him -- adding more than 800 comments to his March post. (The topic did drift a bit.) Some popular bloggers, including Instapundit.com's Glenn Reynolds and Scripting.com's Dave Winer don't have "comment" buttons on all of their blog items. It's easy to see how a high-readership site could be overwhelmed by comments, even if the topics weren't controversial. RadioOpenSource.org broadcaster Christopher Lydon uses blog comments to "continue the conversation" of his call-in radio show, which is available over the air and online. I like this discussion of Craigslist. I like the way Rocketboom.com lets viewers type in the comment window while watching the day's video, including Friday's item -- which was a person-on-the-street series of interviews asking for... comments. I'll add more to this during the weekend... 7:29:44 PM    comment []

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