I've wrestled with shutting the comments down here from time to time.
Occasionally it's just a bother, especially when someone is grossly off topic or latches onto something in a post tangentially and runs with it.
I always come down on leaving them running, and am even considering opening it to non-google ID commenters, because feedback is important.
I've noticed, more than once, that once a blog gets a certain size and achieves a following that comments tend to get shut down.
Then the quality of the blog inevitably drops.
There's a term for what happened.
Group-Think.
The blogger will have made friends and associates through the comments-allowed period of their blog and they will follow the blogger to other social media outlets. If the blogger is big enough to rate a Cool-Kid® status, they're damn sure not going to screw up their chance to rub elbows with fame and uh... it's not fortune.
The writers get ever more isolated from the actual market, the readers.
After enough of this group-think isolation without feedback from the real world... Causal relationships invert and carts push horses about.
I find the trend depressing.
Even more depressing is being the first canary in the mine to die and notice that the blogger we once enjoyed is no longer worth reading, even for free.
In many ways a Cool-Kid® is a form of Dancing Monkey. While they're dancing to the proper tune, it's enjoyable. When they go off script or leave their area of expertise or venture an opinion their circle of group-think friends have convinced them is representative of reality... well, I can change the channel, can't I?
It's irritating, in a couple of cases, where they keep getting linked and I don't want to read them anymore. So I don't click the link most of the time. Occasionally I do, and sometimes the linking site has comments enabled... It's reassuring to see that one was merely one the first people to notice the author is no longer in touch with the hows and whys of the people reading their work.
PS: What's even more sad is you, the reader, might be thinking of a specific blogger when I say all this. While some are more recent than others, this isn't about A blogger. This pattern repeats, this refers to several bloggers. What might be interesting is to see if any of them get defensive about it.
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For a second I thought you were talking about me and the OC post, but since I don't belong to the Cool-Kid® band (and sure as shit they don't want me) I can breathe easy now.
ReplyDeleteI'm still at that phase where comments make me all warm and fuzzy. And I prepare a Hognose like reply to each one but get distracted by work, the Braves or Household Six and forget to hit publish.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about that, but now that I do, I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteOn a probably related note, I notice that the most inflammatory 'articles' and 'editorials' from those who think they matter also have comments turned off, and many of them do not provide any form of contact information. It's almost as if they don't want any feedback from people who don't already know how to contact them...
If Instapundit can have comments and all that goes with that, there should be no reason for any blogger to not have comments.
ReplyDeleteSure, lots of imbecilic comments and commenters write their screed.
But Disqus give readers the option to never see comments from someone they don't want to read.
So the yo-yo's feel good about responding to a post and I don't care what they write as I don't even see what they wrote.