Today I’ve been thinking about the constant conflict between writing blog posts and commenting on blogs (or other types of sites). When is the line crossed from a simple comment to that of a full-blown blog? When should we tell people that comment on our sites that they should take it to a blog? I’ve pondered these ideas in the past as I’ve faced Dave Winer’s particular outlook on this topic.
I have always wondered why comments and the articles they’re attached to have to be separated. On some sites, comments are actually hidden behind several clicks and other inane visual elements that keep you from what others are saying. Others still have simply shut off their commenting systems altogether. I want to change that.
I was interested in this time-tested idea of how “broken” commenting systems are. Dave Winer is also talking about this, and as you might expect, I mostly disagree with him. The thing is, commenting systems are not broken, they just suck. We may currently have the best we can get from the text-based system, but the work should be spent on making them suck less.
An interesting article on the beautifully laid out Upstreamist talks about the influx of advertising into a part of the web that has classically been untouched by ads: the comment section.
I came across a very interesting blog called Scripting News by a person named Dave Winer. He has all sorts of points about RSS, Blogging and, of course, scripting. I don’t know him, I’ve never met him. I did, however, come across a blog named “The tech industry is update-happy” (link) where he just bitches and moans about software updates. I decided I would comment on his blog, and he did the worst thing a blogger can do to their readers.