A Friday meta-blogging rant.
June 23rd, 2006I think that blogging without comments is an excersise in extreme egotism. I don’t mean the occassional comment-free entry, those often have their reasons, but an entire blog, rife with opinions, more specifically, biased opinions, Frankly, I think it’s cowardly and unforgivably narcissistic. This, I think, is almost as bad as comment moderation that picks and chooses which opinions are worth publishing or those who edit comments to suit their own needs/wants.
Sometimes I see blogs or message boards or other community-based websites where groups form up to promote and encourage each other - often without any apparent good reason. No matter how wrong one person may be or how stupid they are acting, all of their imaginary friends come together to say "You’re so wonderful. You can do no wrong." Even this is less offensive to me than those who eschew comments on their to-be-revered words.
I believe that these comment-free zones are refusing to acknowledge that differing opinions even exist. That their opinion is the only opinion there is - let alone that is valid.
While I was surfing last night I came across a post that set off the IT girl inside of me, so I said something. Sometimes when I comment I come off rather harsh and a little bitchy, despite my intentions. When I went back today, Ananke had replied to me, explaining her point of view, further explaining the situation and being a completely rational person. Many other situations would have had the blog owner ripping me apart, or waiting for their readership to do it. It was so refreshing to experience a rational person who could accept a comment that was at odds with her own entry. I try to do the same thing in my own blogging.
Ed and I, for example, often go head to head on issues. He’s still my friend online as well as IRL, but if he disagrees with me, I think it’s a sign of real friendship that he feels comfortable enough to say it. Usually we keep conversations restricted to their original forums, as in, we rarely discuss online agruments in person, but even when we do, we’re reasonable people who don’t resort to screaming or petty name-calling.
Is that the concern? That you can’t be rational about criticism? In that case, I strongly suggest that you grow a thicker skin or step away from the internet. Personally, I’d rather know what people are thinking in relation to what I’ve said than knowing that they’re saying those things behind my back.
Beyond that, we blog because we have an opinion. We add ourselves to traffic-generatings sites because we want others to read our opinions. To make a decision to subject the rest of the blogosphere to your opinon and not allowing a counter, or even the possibility of counter, you’re making yourself seem like you think you’re better than the rest.
Make people register - fine. Surround yourself with cronies who will defend you to the death, right or wrong - fine. But stop thinking that your opinion is the only one that matters because, frankly, it matters less if you’re too insecure to allow other people to correct your mistakes or have a differing opinion where you keep your own words.
I rock!
Comment by Ed � June 23, 2006 @ 15:38 pm
Granted, I don’t see why people would close comments on their personal websites if they don’t garner millions of hits and thereby millions of spam comments. I think conversation and discussion is the best way to fine tune arguments. You need to hear the other side to counter, and defend your own thoughts.
I agree with you. It’s cowardly and shameful.
Comment by Joy � June 25, 2006 @ 8:12 am
Heh, I can put you in touch with an organization that runs a blog with comments turned off. They have some fairly controversial opinions (though I’m not sure I disagree with them). I believe that their reasons for not allowing comments boiled down to them knowing that there would be lots of comments against what they posit, to the point where their message would be lost, so they choose to simply turned off comments.
Now this group has an interesting, and generally very wealthy, audience, so I’m not sure the audience cares much. But I argued long and hard against turning off comments. In the end, they were paying the bills, so it was their decision.
Give it a read; they actually do make some sense in some of what they right. The funniest bit, for me, is that the two main guys who run this thing are both British ex-pats, not natural-born citizens.
Comment by Jason � June 25, 2006 @ 9:03 am
I think that I can forgive VDARE easier than others for a couple of reasons. First, they are a news site and much more than just a blog. Regardless of the bent of their opinions, their website is more than just spewing a personal opinion. That, to me, makes large difference.
Second, they have “Contact us” information available ALL OVER THE PLACE. You don’t have to hunt for it, you don’t even really have to look very hard at all. Having contact information available in the subject line of each post goes a long way. Far too many of these blogs that I’m refering to don’t even have contact information available, and yet they ask questions of their readership!
I don’t get the feeling that these guys are hiding from anything or even trying to avoid controversy and, to be honest, with an overall design like theirs, probably message forums would make more sense than enabled comments on a blog,, simply because it’s so much more than a blog.
Comment by FyreGoddess � June 25, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
You know, Joy, I had a really bad problem with spam comments a little while back. I was getting 10 times the amount of spam as legit comments. That’s when I got my little graphic code thinger and the biggest problem I’ve run into since is that I lost a comment or two because Askismet was still on and grabbed a comment that I missed.
I’m not even sure if I think ridiculous amounts of spam is a reasonable reason to turn off comments, since there are ways around that.
Comment by FyreGoddess � June 25, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
Oh, no! I’ve been outed as a completely rational person!!! LOL!!! My reputation is ruined.
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
And you were perfectly right in what you said. I just wish you worked in our IT department. Here’s an example of what we get to deal with on a daily basis: I kept getting a message on my monitor when I booted my computer up every morning. I think it was the Microsoft message about sending an error report. Trouble was, I hadn’t gotten on the Internet. I had to reboot and then everything was fine. So I called our crack IT department about it. Two days later, someone showed up, called up a screen (which I can’t find again, I’ve tried) and checked the box that said “Don’t show this message again.” When he rebooted the computer, I got yet another error message which he told me was perfectly OK (I still get it occasionally). Hey, problem solved!! As far as he was concerned anyway. Like I said, if you have any pity, feel some for me.
Comment by Ananke � June 26, 2006 @ 19:43 pm