Vox

Musings, rants, rambling, general nonsense

The Social Part of The Media

Posted on | September 29, 2010 | 1 Comment

Two separate incidents I noticed recently illustrate a new peeve of mine – the lack of conversation on blogs lately.

1) Twitter comments about blog posts. It is great in the sense that the comments are broadcast to a much larger audience, but the conversation is short ~ and short-lived. Not only are readers trying to make their point in 140 characters (or across several Tweets, another peeve) but those points are lost in just a few days. Instead of a ‘group’ conversation on the post, you have several one-to-one exchanges so some good points get lost in the plethora of tweets flying past.

2) Subscription fees for commenting. I know several blogs that require the creation of an account before you can comment. I have resisted that in most cases because I see no reason for me to subscribe when I am perfectly willing to put my info right there in the comment fields. However, for a couple of blogs I went ahead and took the leap. One blog I used to read went to requiring you to create an account, log in each time, enter a captcha, then the comment was sent to moderation. I had no desire to jump through that many hoops just to converse with the author so I not only stopped commenting, I stopped even visiting. This evening I visited a new blog that is requiring a subscription fee: $3.47 per month to comment. Are there a lot of people willing to pay over $40 a year to contribute to someone else’s blog?

The pay-to-say blog just answered me (on Twitter LOL) saying that the fee will keep the conversation civil and I should try the free 30 day trial.
Hmmm….

  • If the only way you can keep your commenters civil is by charging them, perhaps you aren’t inspiring the right kind of discussion.
  • There is no way I am ever going to pay for the “privilege” of commenting on a blog site, so why would I spend 30 days starting conversations I won’t be around to follow?

I’m happy that Twitter allows people to spread the word to a much larger audience, I just miss the days of long comment threads.

BTW: I have seen Disqus* on many sites, which allows “signing in” to comment with one of your existing social media accounts; Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook… and keeps track of all your comments across multiple sites. The best of both worlds.

* I realize there are others that offer similar functionality. I reference Disqus because it seems to be the best and most widely used.

UPDATE: From the comments, a differing view. See his full post on Ricochet here



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Category: blogs, General, Media, peeves

Comments

One Response to “The Social Part of The Media”

  1. Dave Roy
    November 7th, 2010 @ 7:49 am

    I do see your point, but I think the Ricochet person who responded to you about keeping the discussion “civil” under-represented what it does.

    What it does is keep the trolls and those who post comments for the sole purpose of getting into personal arguments at bay.

    National Review’s blogs just started a comment system, where they moderate comments. No real discussion happens there because there’s a delay in your comment being posted, and then the blog entry is off the page (or even if on the same page, it’s way down on the bottom) so you don’t even think to go back and check.

    So far, I’ve found the whole Ricochet site and discussions to be very valuable and enriching. Who knows? I may move toward your position as time goes on.

    But for now, I find it worth it.

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