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A few months ago, one of my favorite bloggers, Temerity Jane, swore she'd become a better Internet citizen and issued a challenge to herself and her readers to become a person-who-comments.

And although I agree wholeheartedly about the whole digital citizenship thing, I've never quite made it over the captcha (that's my excuse, at least) to become a regular commenter -- even on the sites I write for.

Oh, I read plenty of blogs. PLENTY. And I've got tons to say in response. TONS. I often share via blog posts via Twitter and Google Reader (admittedly, without commentary). But when particularly inspired, when I really have something to add to the conversation, I write my follow-up thoughts here on this blog. I am far more apt to do that than to leave my thoughts as comments on the original site.

I know I should comment more. I should comment more on other blogs. I should comment more in response to my blog posts elsewhere. I should do more to foster comments here.

I guess.

Maybe.

I've been rather intrigued by some of the back-and-forth-and-round-and-round in the techblogging world over the last week or so about commenting on blogs. The first salvo was fired at Daring Fireball author John Gruber by Joe Wilcox who said the former needed to "be a man" and allow comments on his blog. Chauvinistic framing of the question aside, Wilcox's argument is that Gruber doesn't allow comments on his blog because he's unwilling to be open to input or rebuff from readers. Wilcox suggests that Gruber is only interested in broadcasting from his soapbox, not in discussing issues.

Gruber responds on his blog. And right there, it's pretty much "I rest my case." I mean, he responds. And he makes a good case, I think, for why he has comments shut off on Daring Fireball: "What makes DF an efficient and effective soapbox is exactly that it is not noisy. My goal is for not a single wasted word to appear anywhere on any page of the site."

Comments, despite the gesture towards openness and community and "furthering the conversation," are a largely pain in the fucking ass. Commenters like to ignore the substance of your argument and point out that you made a punctuation error in paragraph 2. And commenters can be know-it-alls and trolls. Or they can be ever-so-upbeat spam -- "Your site is so great! I can't believe more people don't comment here!" with links back to some sort of "enhancement" website.

I have a separate email folder into which all the comments from my blog posts go. And I won't lie, sometimes I approach unread messages there with real trepidation. (So yeah clearly, I need to be a man.)

But despite my dislike of (some) comments, I would never call to shut down commenting/commentary. To the contrary. I want us to all talk more, to be (*gasp*) a nation of bloggers. And really, I do love good comments. I'm ridiculously pleased when I get them (although honestly, that's not all that often).

I want to be a good digital citizen. I want to be part of smart, vibrant online communities. But I'm not sure those communities can be judged by or are necessarily fostered by blog comments. Except on Temerity Jane's blog. But she just rocks that way.

Audrey Watters


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Audrey Watters

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