Scoble has a posting today touting the conversational aspect of blogs. He goes on to lecture that by making posting in response to his boss Lenn Pryor's blog posting (saying essentially that blogs suck the juices out of a conversation) that he is proving that blogs are somehow superior to newsgroups. I really don't see this as a blog vs. newsgroup issue - though Robert presents that as a strawman and spends the rest of his post discussing the relative merits of newsgroups vs. blogs.
"No, it's not threaded like newsgroups. No, it might not be all that fast (I'm way behind cause that dang boss of mine has had me busy all week). No, it might not be in one place. No, it isn't easy to follow."
I doubt anyone could argue that there is no potential for conversation via blogs but I don't think these are arguments that would convince anyone that blogs the way they are currently implemented are a good conversational tool. But this "argument" distracts from the real issue.
"But I like having conversations here better than in the newsgroups. Mostly cause I don't have as much noise to deal with here."
In a "conversation" what one side of the "conversation" likes is or at least should be only one small part of the consideration. But this is also a distractor.
I think the really issue that Lenn presents is that an essential conversational potential in blogs -- a well managed, presented and usable comments system is being ignored and I wholeheartedly agree. Personally I really don't care whether the comments system is newsgroup like or not (though the paradigm of a well presented threaded conversation seems like a tested usable one), but I would like a straightforward mechanism to view and understand posting comments and to comment on a posting. I think the ability to post a response in my own blog is a useful mechanism but that is not the only level of converstation that should be supported or encouraged.
