Monday, July 26, 2004
I don’t know what to title this post.
I don’t know who this ‘Mandos’ fellow is, but he’s pretty much right on the money. Of course a blog can choose not to allow comments. But that does run counter to the roots of the medium, particularly in low-volume community blogs, such as those on SM Smith’s definitive local blogroll. I respect POI’s choice, but I don’t particularly like it.
The blog is, at heart, an effort to rebuild local community and democracy, and allowing discussion is part of that. Many big blogs can’t, of course, because at around 10,000 visitors/day, the trolls start to get the upper hand. So I can understand Josh Marshall choosing not to embrace comments (also because he runs his more like a magazine, and because he responded to an e-mail from literally within minutes). But I think that you need to have a good reason for going against the populist culture of blogging. Blogs and comments kinda go together.
POI’s reasons for disallowing comments are elitist. I can respect that, but I don’t have to like it. But I find Nick Tam’s comment:
As Mustafa correctly points out, many, if not all of the contributors to this site will gladly post and/or reply to items that arrive in our inboxes if they have something substantial to say.
...a bit disingenuous. He seems to imply that they’ll post your feedback, so long as they think it worthy. While this is entirely OK with me - again, it’s their blog, not mine - it is NOT the same as actually allowing comments. POI chooses what they post and can use that power to frame the discussion. This is antithetical to the idea behind open commenting. What is crap to me may be gold to you.
