To allow comments or not to allow comments
Ann Althouse notes that Walter Russell Mead has closed comments on his blog with the following explanation:
To make the comments section work in its present form we would have to edit and curate much more aggressively than we do now and in our current judgment the effort needed to do that is better spent improving other features of the blog.
Althouse writes:
The previous post [at Mead’s blog], the last post with comments, is saying that the blog hit a new traffic record. That got 11 comments. 11 comments! Is it really that hard to “edit and curate”?
Going to Mead’s blog, I notice he adds that in three years of blogging he’s gotten 40,000 comments. That’s a fair number, about 13,333 a year, which made me realize I have absolutely no idea have many comments I’ve gotten here. Since WordPress obligingly keep count, I took a look: 166,490 and counting.
Let’s see. I’ve been blogging for about 7 1/2 years, which makes approximately 22,200 comments a year. Is it particularly arduous to “edit and curate” those comments? No, it’s really not; I’m with Althouse on this.
I’m only one person here. On my old blog, using Blogger, policing comments was difficult, I admit. But with my move to WordPress I gained a ton of much more effective tools to fight the trolls and spammers. It doesn’t take all that much time or effort, either—and much more importantly, the gains from allowing a comments section are vast.
Mead is a well-known writer in print journalism rather than primarily a blogger, so my guess is that he became used to writing without comments long before he enabled them. It would make sense that he can take them or leave them. But I learned quite some time ago that, although I’ve written articles at sites that don’t have comments, I much much MUCH prefer the immediate feedback and the camaraderie of a comments section.
In fact, I very much doubt I would blog without them. It would be like dropping a stone down a well and watching it disappear.
Aside from spammers, is it really that hard to “edit” comments anyway?
It seems to me that you really let folks say what they think here with the attitude that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Eventually “trolls” go away when they realize no one is listening.
Perhaps, Mead, and others who shut down comments, are not used to having folks disgree with him?
Part of the fun of reading blogs is being able to comment on them. I enjoy Mead’s blog posts. I have commented there on occasion, but he (and his interns) churns out such an abundance of material that a lot of it doesn’t seem to attract much in the way of comments.
He had attracted a few liberal commenters who went reliably negative on many of his posts and tried to shout down anyone who tried to debate them. A few of the comment sections had become pretty bombastic and ad hominem. I think Mead found it to be too much like a schoolyard for his tastes.
I often wonder why some blogs attract serious commenters while others seem to attract sloganeers or Alinsky types who specialize in mocking anyone they disagree with. Whatever the answer, I’m thankful that you attract people who try to make comments with some substance and argue facts rather than trying to bully or mock anyone they disagree with. I have learned much from your and your commenters.
Neo, you have a terrific comment section. I’m glad you enjoy keeping us around. You attract people who seem friendly, polite, and willing to engage others.
This is the kind of party I wish I could attend, but unfortunately, my social circle includes only liberals, who already know everything there is to know.
Yes, this blog would not be what it is without our comments! 🙂
I think Mead is an academic and does not want to be, unfairly, associated with any of the more outlandish comments that are made. It’s not “difficult”, but given how prolific he is, and given that it’s basically his 2nd job, I can see why it would be an annoying thing. It’s kind of like why I pay someone else to change my oil. Sure, I could do it, but not on top of everything else I do.
If you were to look at it from a business point of view, then the question would be how many readers would you lose by getting rid of comments vs. how much time/money you spend maintaining the comments page that could go to something else.
Mead is a big name. I know non political junkies who have heard of him. I’m guessing the couple hundred post he gets a week (that might only be a few dozen individuals) are a small, unrepresentative portion of his total readership.
I would guess that at a blog like this (or Ms. Althouse’s) more readers comment, but more importantly, more readers come here because they can read the comments and leave their own. Its kinda like the difference between a Walmart and a corner store.
I greatly appreciate the comments on your blog; they make me think deeper about the topics you raise, they make me laugh, and they provide a sense of community that really enhances the entire experience.
It’s ironic that you’ve raised the question of comments as I regularly read another blog upon which hardly anyone comments (though it has a decently high readership). I find myself wishing it had what you have here in terms of reader dialog.
I didn’t see holmes’ comment when I started writing mine. He said more or less what I was trying to say, but so much better.
I’ve always been of the opinion that closing comments is really about not wanting to hear people rip holes in your arguments. It’s a way to close off unwanted criticism.
Too bad. The comments section is the most interesting part of every blog. Closing them usually means I stop reading them.
Dittos.
I come for the superb blogging and the diversity of the proprietor (the arts & culture: mm, tasty); I keep coming back because of the high class comments section.
Take a bow, y’all.
—
…even the long, looooong comments of, *ahem*, some of the “more fascinating perspectives”, I will generally slog through. One never knows where one will find gems than, does one.
I noted that last week on Mead and thought, “Well, here goes his traffic into the toilet.” And I betcha that’s true.
All in all, Mead is a punk. Real men (and women) enable comments.
Mead’s real problem with comments has been, for a long time, a number of posters who not only don’t agree with the Prof but have not trouble saying so without tugging the forelock.
I think the blogger can set the tone. I don’t know how much policing Neo has to do, but what we see is a civil and interesting comment section. The comments add a lot to this blog.
William Katz at Urgentagenda uses a different scheme. His comments are gathered into a subscriber’s only forum that has a nominal charge. I enjoy his blog, but I love his forum.
I have to admit I read the comments sections on most blogs less and less. Mead’s blog is interesting, but his comments section started attracting smug leftists who added little to the discussion but felt free to attack blogger and commenters alike shotgun-style (yes, that means you “thibaud,” wherever you are).
I am happy to say I still read the comments here regularly and enjoy them very much.
I agree with mos to fthe comments above. Reading them helps me re-examine my own psoition on various subjects and helps to sharpen my iwn argument by either rebuttal or by learning something new about the topic.
Not to get maudlin, bu tfor me it feels like a kind of cyber-family where most of us can agree or disagree and do it on an adult level. Neoneocon, your hosting of this blog and the various topics has, IMO, much to do with that (perhaps even more so your reviewing of troll and spam comments that we never see).
At any rate, to say “it would be like dropping a stone down a well and watching it disappear.” is a lovely compliment. If I may, thank your from all of us who frequent this cyber round table.
sorry about the sloppy fingers—meant to hit preview, hit submit instead.
I like the comments section here a lot. And I like the classiness of Neo’s blog. Every time I feel a liberal friend might possibly change his or her thinking, I direct them to this blog because Neo is a “changer” and because of its moderate tone. We are almost all staunch conservatives but we express ourselves in reasonable ways.
I think this blog is an especially good place to direct women liberals who have a chance of “changing”.
Sooooo…keep up the good work, Neo and your “community”.
P.S. I do have to admit I enjoy the raunchiness of Ace’s commenters too. 🙂
Yes, texexec, I feel the same way about Ace’s commenters, though sometimes they’re too sophomoric even for me.
I also enjoy Althouse, but she makes a point of being a moving target. She lacks a true North. It’s Neo’s unerring internal compass that makes this blog my home on the web.
As a blogger I agree completely about comments, Neo. I had a static web site for a while, where I posted blog-like mini-essays, with no commenting capability, and switched to a blog mainly to make adding new pieces easier. But that also gained commenting, and I very quickly grew to really value that. In fact it’s one of the main reasons I don’t give up the blog now in order to focus on other projects. I have been fortunate in that my blog has had really good conversations with very little rancor. Of course it doesn’t have that many readers, either….
What texexec said (and the others) re Neo’s comments feature:
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Since Neo mentions the Althouse blog in her post: I’ve been wondering this year whether Ann Althouse is undergoing a Neo-like political change. She says she voted for Obama in 2008, but seems to have become much more conservative in the wake of the Madison protests over the past year or so. Or maybe her new husband has been influencing her political views? There seem to be so few people who are willing or able to change… the fact that Neo is a changer is one of the reasons I enjoy her blog; it’s made me become interested in the phenomenon and I find myself looking for signs of it. I was going to say that “right to left” changing almost never happens, but that brought David Brooks to mind (though I’m not sure he was ever a real conservative).
For me, living in Germany, Neo and her commenters were a sanity saver during the Bush era and now the Obama era. I really needed to hear from normal people rather than journalists and profs who share some of my views and were willing to share their life experiences that brought them to these views. In Germany, I never meet people like who have enough knowledge of America to spur my thinking and who aren’t under the influence of the do-gooder media.
Too many blogs and websites have been invaded by ideologs. I’m thinking of places like American Spectator, where a comment stream goes into drug legalization within the first two posts. And places like American Thinker have lots of relatively uninformed commenters.
I love the jello posts and the occasional silliness as well as the provocative literary and philosophical posts Neo uses to get us out of the political mire. And I love the wicked sense of humor of many commenters. One of the British decorating/gardening mags used to have a backpage article on who you would like to invite to a dinner party. Since we can’t resurrect Churchill, I would be happy to have all of you at my table(s).
I don’t get to sit down and listen to the insights of Writers, Engineers, Chemists, Doctors, Lawyers, Physicists, etc. I read this blog without fail every day.
It’s because of the steady, rational insightful perspective Neo offers that this is the site I recommend to people who seem genuinely curious about (or potentially vulnerable to) conservative thoughts. And it’s because of the comments that those people see it’s possible to discuss almost any issue (ballet, fashion, spectacular faceplants) without resorting to echo-chamber platitudes or ill-bred antagonism. A potent combination.
Ah… but there is a key missing point in the analysis…
lefties tend to go to the lefties blogs to read, and so, their blogs are this mish mosh psychotic set of discussions… conservatives, when they have a voice, tend to also get together, but if the blogger doesnt favor the lefties by excusing their behavior, they stay and you ahve discussions that are more interesting and less bs. if they DO allow the lefties by excusing the behavior, then they drive out cogent commentary, and end up with psycho mish mosh..
you have to stick with it to get rid of the mish mosh and most wont stick with it till the people who write that way to find meaning in their life, get bored and go to find meaning elsewhere more fertile and ENTERTAINING…
by the way… some may not like my long posts… maybe more than some… but i wonder if they realize that anything past a certain point is anathema to almost all of the mish mosh makers? (part of is that their game is to get the other to waste their lives and effective time writing a long thing, which then gets the board person to eject them.. voila, clearing it for more mish mosh).
in fact… you may notice that the sources that disburse info, but care about their info, often do not allow comments to avoid the mish mosh… (or to avoid a thousand people correcting them and their ignoring it and getting it wrong)
Last night i was reading an article, and went to the comments and there was two commenters that looked like they spent all there time trying to end threads with some leftist pap or comeback…
kind of like someone trying to do a version of Don Rickles on meth taking the world on like Cody Jarret…
[for the few who are too young to remember… Don rickles is the king of insults, and Cody Jarret is James Cagney character in white heat and the reference is to the final scene which is what everyone references. look at me ma, top of the world…]
just go to the DemocraticUnderground and read the comments there…
here is an example… you get an article that totally misses what the chair thing with clint was about. zoom, right over their heads. after all, what else could they do?
now.. the ignorati of course always wait to see what the excuse du jour is or the tack to take…
and so, given this cue, what do you think the comments are like?
well, with the fence post clearly stated that your not allowed to figure it out, the rest of the whole is a mish mosh of stuff that works off of that… or random comments… or inserting the paranoiac moriarty excuse…
now, threads that have conservatives on it would immediately see the shortsighted point for what it was…. ie. Obama bought his election, so now Romney is buying his (but we aren’t supposed to remember the first part nor ask why Obama cant raise money).
and then there are other comments in which the commenter i think doesnt realize what they are saying (nor the readers).
It will be extra work because of all the voter laws they have gotten passed.
ah… why would it be extra work if you were complying? and what laws are these?
like ryans lying articles, no one tells you which of what he said is a lie…
which makes watching the speech from their perspective kind of like watching the knights who say ni and trying to figure out what word arthur is saying to make them cringe…
but threads discussing it on the left, cant claim he didnt lie, and cant point to the lie… so they become mish mosh.
mish mosh is safe and in terms of the collective, about as equal as crying for dear leader and making sure you do it enough to avoid punishment when they start comparing…
This is one of the best commenting communities around, in my opinion. For some reason this site attracts intelligent and learned people from all walks of life, and the discussions are almost always polite and civil, without being highfallutin’.
Sometimes I don’t have anything to say about a given topic, so I don’t comment. I rarely make a comment just to see my name on the screen. I still read them, though. The dance threads and the offbeat stuff are part of the charm of this blog. Heaven forbid it should be all politics all the time.
I don’t spend much time at liberal sites, and I see a lot of conservative sites that are echo chambers. There were a couple of places where I noted that some of the OWS protesters had some legitimate points, and I got my head taken off. The other commenters were evidently more interested in engaging in nonstop invective and ridicule.
Ace of Spades has the most consistently hilarious comment section in the entire blogosphere. I comment there frequently, but I can’t hold a candle to some of those people with their weapons-grade wit.
Karl Denninger’s Ticker Forum is also a good place, and he has a pretty good method of keeping some control over the comments. His forum is subdivided into numerous subsections, and access is determined by donation level. A member who does not donate can see most of the site and comment X number of times per hour. (I don’t remember the exact number.) Then there are three levels of donations: green, silver, and gold. A one-time donation of $10 gives you permanent green status, and you can see more subforums and comment more often. The gold level gives you access to the entire site and unlimited commenting. But even the green level is perfectly adequate for most people’s purposes. It’s an effective way to keep the trolls and unserious a**holes at bay. (Not to say that some of the regulars aren’t a**holes, but you’ll have that anywhere.)
Denninger wrote the forum software himself, and he has the ability to ban a member from a particular subforum (mainly for off-topic comments) without banning him from the site altogether.
I rarely read comments anywhere but here because they almost always devolve into hatred and snipe. This is a testament to you and the readers here, but I also think you stay off the radar a bit.
I have left a few comments at Meads, and with Althaus. She gets a lot of comments on some posts, and there are troll, trolls, I say, out there waiting to bang their gongs and be insfufferable.
Mostly pretty mellow folks hereabouts. Must be Neo’s calming presence.
Neo, I personally am FAR more likely to frequent a site allowing comments. Particularly ones with “the right level” of commenters… not too many, not too few. Enough so that I can say something and figure at least some will notice, but not so few that no one is likely to even notice because there’s few visitors.
I can name exceptions on both ends of that, but it’s certainly a reason for visiting — the social atmosphere is certainly a part of it.
>>> nor ask why Obama cant raise money
Especially since he had so much success last time around… N’cest pas?
I am reminded of the kerfuffle over Froma Harrop, a journalist based in Providence, last summer. Dear Froma had stated that Tea Party and such people were “economic terrorists” when it came to the budget and setting debt limits.
Interesting that Dear Froma, who compared Tea Party people to terrorists, was head of a Civility Project for some organization dealing with journalism. (What would dear Froma say about the Senate that this year turned down Obama’s budget by a 96-0 vote? Any terrorists there? 🙂 ) From Dear Froma defending her position:
Froma attracted some comments to her blog, myself among them. While a lot – or most- of the commenters disagreed with her, they were expressed in a civil manner.
Here are some quotes from Dear Froma herself at her very own blog, about the issue:
After Dear Froma wrote that on her blog, she stated the following:
Dear Froma got the airs from people who had the effrontery to disagree with her, so she closed off comments.
“Comments are closed.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/05/hypocrisy-irony-and-the-new-civility/
You have a wonderful blog neo. You bring up such a wide range of topics and the comments of your readers are always interesting. Your blog is the only place, beyond weather, commodity markets, and drudge that I read each day. I trust you realize how much your regular readers appreciate what you do everyday.
Neo, when are going to have a posting that combines two of your favorite things, ballet and Jello? 🙂
Sam L.
It is not merely Neo’s calming presence. She boots off trolls. If I dare to write out the full names of some trolls who got banned, instead of writing B#$%&&$#@#$% OR L$%#$, my comment might get blocked by Neo’s commenting software.
The odds are pretty good that if you get annoyed by a particular comment/troll for such things as misquoting you, changing the goalposts, etc., you will soon find that Neo has banned the troll. She has a pretty good ear for that.
What, us accountants don’t matter? We’re still only worth an inclusionary ‘etc.’? Math, baby, it’s the bane of liberals; it’s also reality tv without spin. Just ask my hero, Paul Ryan, a double major Econ and PolySci grad. In other words, no lawyuhs on the Republican ticket. Yay!
Lawyuhs only know how to double bill their clients while a CEO knows how to cut costs, increase productivity, steady morale, all the while making the Board and the shareholders happy, that is, make a profit. Just like the Dems and their ‘you didn’t build that’ and ‘government is the only thing we have in common’ communist shibboleths, right?
As a Dreaded Lawyuh, I know a family court judge who says that his job is to preside over the end of civilization. Spend a day in his court and you’ll see exactly what he means. The comment sections on most blogs are just like that courtroom: full of lost souls capable of nothing but name-calling, irrational hatred and hopelessness. Thank goodness for this place, for Neo and for the commenters here, who give me hope that civilization might last a little bit longer after all.
166,490 +33+1 comments.
Whenever I can, I remember this blog when shopping at Amazon. But that small voice inside tells me that in the several years that I have been reading, I haven’t followed up with the other side.
Thanks Neo for taking the time, effort and expense in sharing your thoughts and ideas over the years. I find it to be like walking in flower garden, so many flowers each unique and special. Each flower simply being. In this case your blog is a thought garden and my thoughts are broadened after visiting. So thanks to you and the comments for broadening my view of life. 🙂
You even allow me to (dis?)grace your blog. I am quite sure others have queried your wisdom on this matter. I am quite sure, even before he stopped allowing comments, I would have been banned from his site. Heck, you don’t even “modify” my comments as some “conservative” sites do. I’ve got to hand it to you, you don’t let your feelings interfere with an open thread. You do own your emotions. That, lady, is the difference.
Cheers.
Neo is the kind of person taken for granted. I know I do but every now and then a thought presents that something special might be going on here.
Neo kind of people are always good people and you don’t know how good because they won’t tell you.
Charles,
“Eventually ‘trolls’ go away when they realize no one is listening.”
From my experience this is not so. Trolls keep at their diatribes and hit-and-run posts even when ignored. The only ex-troll is a banned troll.
Just my opinion, I’m not making any practical suggestion with this. In fact, I think a comments forum under my administration would be a lot less pleasant to post on than Neo’s, because I don’t have even a quarter of the tolerance she has toward opposing views.
[blushes]
Thank you all for the tributes. One of my biggest hopes when starting the blog was that it have a good comments section, with a lot of interesting back and forth, like a salon (although that name was taken). That was one of my biggest motivations for blogging, and it’s been a source of great satisfaction over the years that, IMHO, it has come to be.
Dittos.
I come for the superb blogging and the diversity of the proprietor (the arts & culture: mm, tasty); I keep coming back because of the high class comments section.
Take a bow, y’all.
That’s what it’s all about. And you help light the way for those who are finding their way out of the kool-aid induced trance. It’s inspirational. Love ya.
Charles and ziontruth: my experience is that most trolls worthy of the name do not go away on their own at all. If they’re good at what they do, they attract a lot of attention and feed off it. They must be banned.
The trick is figuring out who’s a troll and who isn’t, and acting quickly and decisively. When I ban someone, you’ll almost never hear about it. It’s one of those behind-the-scenes activities.
Actually, wasn’t Mead hiring an intern? Couldn’t the intern just do comments? It must be more that the comments aggravated him or that he felt he was being connected to the comments in some way.
Which made me think of a business opportunity if it were worthwhile to start a business in this country- outsourcing blog comments control. Just people who, perhaps with aid of an algorithm of some kind, read flagged comments and delete the troublesome ones for a blog. There are thousands of blogs who could use this service and who would find it useful to pay for it. Also every single Yahoo news comment section would find this helpful.
Neo’s Algonquin table…