Oddly Together

The Case for Curating Comments

Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at Oddly Together. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.

Before my mid-June post “Be a Man, John Gruber,” his blog had no commenting system, while Oddly Together offered Disqus. I insisted that “his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.” There was much more to the reasoning. Read the post to get it all.

John didn’t change his no-commenting ways, as expressed in his responding post “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair.” So, I flipped things around, trying it John’s way by turning off commenting. What started out as a two-week experiment has gone on for two months. Two reasons: 1) I waited for Disqus to release tools for migrating comments between blogs. 2) I observed a seemingly troubling increase in obnoxious commenting. What? Are too many people unemployed, with nothing else to do but vent their anger and frustration through comments? It’s a sad state affairs on the social Web—that so many commenting deviants pollute rather than add to the conversation.

Since mid June, I have sought to work out the real value of commenting. I even tried to set up an online debate between John and Robert Scoble. John and Robert are both high-profile bloggers, who happen to be on opposite sides of the commenting question. Robert is a big fan of comments, while John is not (at his own blog, Daring Fireball). One of the bloggers was enthusiastic to engage the discussion, but not the other. Because I consider my communications between John and Robert to be private, I won’t say which cooled the idea.

Just days after I turned off commenting, Boston Globe published “Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster.” Three days later, Brenna Erlich asked at Mashable: “Are You a Comment Troll?” One commenter aptly responded:

A troll has always been someone who just wants to cause a stir and gain responses. A troll is not about illiciting a response to spur discussion. It’s just a response to get a response and get people fired up.

You are correct that a troll can will post a rant or typo-ridden garbage, but it’s always inaccurate on purpose. It has to be, or you’re not going to get people fired up enough to respond to your troll.

I’ve long opposed anonymous commenting, because of trolling. But trolls register to comment just as easily using the most obvious of fake names (as they do at Betanews, where I have no control over commenting). I’ve decided to filter them out by proxy. For now, all comments will require my approval before appearing on an Oddly Together post. I may change the policy in the future. I won’t approve all comments, either. This blog will be a curated conversation. Comments that add to the conversation and extend the storytelling will most likely be approved. I will discard the others. Trolls be gone.

I’m trying to find middle ground between the commenting approaches advocated by John and Robert. John asserts Daring Fireball is a curated conversation, representing his voice for an audience of similar thinkers. Robert believes the conversation benefits from interaction between the author and commenters and commenters among themselves. He is Mr. Social Media. I want to have it both ways—curation and reader interaction. That may not be an achievable goal, but I want to try.

Disqus’ comment migration tools didn’t work for me. They’re more suited to moving comments between domains. I wanted to move comments to different URLs off the same domain. Given this situation and the new curation approach, I reset the clock to zero, by deleting all comments from this blog on August 21. The comments are archived and could return in the future. For now, Oddly Together starts with a clean slate of comments, as of five days ago.

There are many good places for comments, such as the reviews people leave on Amazon product pages, comments on Facebook Walls or responses people give to pics on photo-sharing sites like Flickr. Oddly Together has a managing editor—Me! I edit my own posts for clarity, readability and style. I curate the posts until they’re ready for public display. Now I will curate comments, too. From a storytelling perspective, comment curation is just editing. If you don’t like the approach, if I curate your comment into the trashbin, please email and make a case for your comment. But I suspect that the majority of worthy comments will be quickly approved. 

That said, I would prefer not to curate comments because free speech is an important part of my worldview. Curation is necessary. Oddly Together is like my home, where other people have an open invitation to come by and chat. Trolls come to dump their garbage on my lawn or—gasp—living room. They also beat up my guests. No more.

Do you have a commenting story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

The Comments, No-Comments Debate gets Noisy

People love catfights, which perhaps explains some of the interest in the comments/no-comments debate I’ve been having with Mac blogger John Gruber. It’s a pseudo-debate, really, since the only engagement is blog posting. John and I haven’t directly communicated.

I started it all, by calling out John for not having comments on his blog. I told him to “Be a man,” which I actually meant with some backslapping good nature. But some people are morally offended. Stacia Van Doll reblogged the post as: “QUIT being a douchebag Joe Wilcox.”

She writes:

Does this guy Joe Wilcox think he’s some sort of ancient barbarian man or something?Give me a break. What’s wrong with the world today is everything that stems from shallow, unintelligent macho bullshit like Wilcox’s.

No one has ever accused me of being macho before. I can’t bring myself to be insulted. Whoa, is this irony or what? Look what popped up on Twitter seconds after I wrote the first sentences of this paragraph—from Mark Dagon Hughes: “What I want to know is, what has @joewilcox ever done that was so manly he can make a mortal insult to someone over fucking blog comments?” 

Overnight, John answered my post with “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair,” and I responded with “Blogging: Is Curation or Comments Better?” With my post, I removed Disqus commenting from Oddly Together, as a 14-day experiment trying it John’s way. John described comments as “cacophonous shouting matches” and his Daring Fireball blog as a “curated conversation.” I want to see how right John is and to stir up some meaningful discussion about comments and whether they add or detract from the storytelling. I don’t expect a pat answer, but it’s only Day 1.

Other folks are piping in about the value of comments. I tweeted these earlier today:

• Marco Arment: “Comments”
• Ian Betteridge: “John Gruber, Joe Wilcox, and why comments are anti-Web”
• Matthew Ingram (GigaOM): “Yes, Comments Can Get Noisy, But We Like Them Anyway”
• Doreen Marchionni: “Blogs, Commenting and the Art of Interaction”
• Ravi (Arhen Code): “Comments isn’t free: Gruber vs Wilcox”

A Refreshing Start
My first experiences with curation are surprisingly positive. For the six days Disqus was active on the “Be a Man” post, the majority of comments were rude or condescending. With comments off, I started getting responses by email. Nearly all are civil and well articulated, regardless of their position about commenting or reaction to the “Be a Man” post. In a future post, after asking permission, I will share some of the emails. I treat all emails as private conservations unless the other party has given permission for the contents to be revealed.

Today, I also extended the interaction, by tweeting more often than usual—and predominately about the comments/no-comments topic. I see Twitter as a potentially good alternative to commenting for three reasons:

1. The 140-character limit restricts just how much people can say. They have to be concise.
2. Tweets are more visible than comments tucked away in some blog post, which should make most people more restrained.
3. Twitter easily leads to conversations that many people can join, which extends the reach of the original narrative and its storytelling.

That leads to a confession about comments. Much changed in my thinking about them between my June 10 “Be a Man” post and John’s June 16 “What’s Fair” response; I had already been rethinking comments’ value. It’s a major reason why I so suddenly changed direction and turned on the turn-off comments experiment. Catalyst: Nicholas Carr’s new book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Nicholas’ discourse led to my writing three related blog posts since June 10:

• “Internet Attention Deficit Disorder”
• “Of Course, Technology Changes You”
• “I Was Wrong About Apple iPad”

Nicholas’ book is having an unintended affect on me. I’m a writer, a journalist, storyteller—and it is in these roles I am interpreting The Shallows. Nicholas’ research raises questions about the Web as a training place for distraction. But I see media consumption’s purpose being immersion. The consumer immerses in a good book or movie. In that context, I’m troubled by comments as distractions to the narrative, which admittedly contradicts what I wrote in the “Be a Man” post about comments adding to the narrative. To be clear: Comments would be just one of many distracting elements someone would see on most any Website.

I’m not retreating my position, certainly not on Day 1 of the no-comments experiment. I have long opposed anonymous commenting. If you’ve got something to say, then don’t shout it from the back of the room. Stand in front. Let others see who you are. Don’t cowardly hide behind anonymous comments, which often are the most obnoxious ones. I am now questioning registered-user or moderated comments for many blogs, but not all.

Comments and Process Journalism
One place where comments do make sense, at least as I see them today, is when the Website encourages readers to participate in the storytelling process. TechCrunch practices what founder Michael Arrington calls “Process Journalism,” a concept he picked up from Jeff Jarvis. In summer 2009 post “Process Journalism and Original Reporting,” I explained that many TechCrunch news stories are posted incomplete—later to be extended and expanded through subsequent posts, as more information is available. Readers help shape the story by their comments, other interactions and tips. I further explained:

For TechCrunch, the process can be surprisingly good reading. I haven’t done an official count, but I’d guess that TechCrunch posts more unfinished stories than the more complete kind published by, say, the New York Times. TechCrunch stories evolve—and, I must assert, too often from unsubstantiated rumors. It’s a process I must grudgingly acknowledge that TechCrunch can be quite transparent about. The process, of the story unfolding over time, produces original content that often is interesting reading…[TechCrunch] readers participate in that process, through comments and other social media tools…Social media—reader participation in the evolving story—is crucial to process journalism.

This evening I asked Doreen Marchionni over Twitter: ”Do you see Conversational Journalism value to comments as part of ongoing stories; e.g. TechCrunch’s Process Journalism.” She responded: “You bet there’s value. Whether readers interact via comments or Twitter or whatever works for me.”

Doreen is sharing her “dissertation on journalism as a conversation,” and she has lots of good advice for bloggers or reporters. The distinction I made in my question is process—an ongoing story, as opposed to one that is finished. Comments part of an ongoing story can sharpen the reporting, make the narrative better reading and keep readers coming back for the next update, whether the main post or additional comments. Using TechCrunch as example, the process builds community and audience of loyal, participatory readers.

That’s a wrap. It has been a long day writing.

[Note, June 17, 2010: Original version stated that Doreen is writing her dissertation. She kindly sent a note informing that she completed the dissertation last summer.]

Do you have a story about Web comments that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Blogging: Is Curation or Comments Better?

John Gruber has responded to my Saturday post at length: “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair.” John’s response is thoughtful and responsible, so much so I’m trying things his way. I challenged him to turn on comments at Daring Fireball, which clearly won’t happen soon, if ever. I don’t agree with all his reasons but see how he applies a writer’s mind to blogging. His writing is an artform.

John responds:

Comments, at least on popular websites, aren’t conversations. They’re cacophonous shouting matches. DF is a curated conversation, to be sure, but that’s the whole premise.

Curation, huh? John and some commenters to my “Be a Man” post insist that comments are unnecessary to the narrative and distract from it. I argued that comments add to the narrative. Fine, I’ll try it John’s way. Most Oddly Together comments are missing anyway, following a blog transition that broke the links (but which Disqus will in the future offer a tool to fix). As an experiment, as of today, I’ve removed the Disqus commenting system from this blog for two weeks. If I decide to permanently turn off comments, I’ll write a mea culpa post and apology to John Gruber.

However, I have just a few quips with his “What’s Fair” post: 

1) John asserts that a quote I attributed to Apple CEO Steve Jobs is paraphrased. Really? I linked to the New York Times. If the Times paraphrased, my apologies. I assumed the Times correctly quoted Steve Jobs.

2) John writes:

Used to be, back in the early days of DF, that those complaining about the lack of comments simply were under the impression that a site without comments was not truly a “weblog”. (My stock answer at the time: “OK, then it’s not a weblog.”) Typically these weren’t even complaints, per se, but rather simply queries: Why not?

Now that DF has achieved a modicum of popularity, however, what I tend to get instead aren’t queries or complaints about the lack of comments, but rather demands that I add them—demands from entitled people who see that I’ve built something very nice that draws much attention, and who believe they have a right to share in it.

Ouch! Was that a slap at me? John, I’m not acting “entitled” to anything. Nor could I or others asking for comments really get it; most major blogging systems use “no follow” tags to prevent link harvesting in comments—from commenters trying to take advantage of his or other bloggers’ success. 

I sincerely expressed that John and his readers would benefit from extended dialog (but I also asserted that no comments let him criticize without criticism). I wrote:

John denies his readers opportunity to better benefit from his writing. John is a good practitioner of stock-and-flow blogging. The flow are the many short posts, often with funny or biting commentary, linking to someone else. The stock is insightful analysis—John’s longer posts, and these would be good venues for discussion.

John Gruber is a unique blogger. He is a Mac enthusiast with a large Mac enthusiast following. It’s called the Mac community for a reason. I’m asking the “Why not?” allow comments question. John has answered well. Now I’m applying his answer as a personal test. No comments for 14 days, with focus on making my narrative stronger on its own.

3) John writes about success he has earned. I should point out that by not having comments and compelling people to respond elsewhere, John generates inbound links that he wouldn’t get from people commenting on Daring Fireball (presuming the blog or comment elsewhere, linking back to his posts). Inbound links are a valuable commodity in determining a blog’s value to advertisers and for search engine ranking. I wonder how comments would affect his traffic? Unfortunately, I’ve got no metric to answer the question.

4) In the “Be a Main” post I suggested that John look to Missouri School of Journalism’s Doreen Marchionni and her writings on “conversational journalism.” John responds: 

I happen to know Doreen personally, and agree that her advice is sage and her research insightful. But perhaps if Wilcox had read more than just the title of this brief piece of hers that he linked to, he’d have realized that the word “comment” does not appear anywhere in it.

Doreen has comments on her Tumblr blog. Tumblr doesn’t have a comment system. She presumably activated Disqus to engage readers, to extend the conversation. 

Finally, in answer to this post’s question: I dunno. I asserted comments improve the writer’s narrative, and John made a case for curation. I’ll report on my experience with both approaches sometime in July.

Do you have a blogging story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.