One of the things that has always interested me about the web, and developing sites for it, is the community aspect. This ability to build a community is not really available when writing normal application software, and although I have built my fair share of applications, it really doesn't fire my interest me in the same way as the web.
Creating a community to attract more visitors?
Since the transformation of xlevel.org.uk from the home of a few open source applications I wrote some years ago to a fully fledge blog I have been considering what it is that makes people have a connection to one certain website more than to another. So, it was with interest that I read an interesting article in the March issue of .Net magazine called "Attract visitors to your site".
In the article the author discusses a number of ways to attracting visitors, including fostering a community through allowing visitors to comment on blog posts. The interesting thing was that the example he used was actually an example of visitors voting for there to be no comments.
The case of Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish
Andrew Sullivan is a British political journalist, commentator and blogger, based in US and writes a blog called The Daily Dish.
In the history of the Daily Dish, Andrew has not had comments on the blog, instead allowing readers to email him their comments and thoughts and later publishing them in follow up posts.
However, in March 2008, he asked the Daily Dish community their feelings on the subject and held a pole. The pole was to be run for a week. However, after just one day it was obvious the feeling of the readers, the pole was closed and the results published.
Amazingly, 60% of readers of the Daily Dish did not want comments on the blog!
This seems strange. If comments are a sure fire way of creating a community, surely the community would be in favour of more interaction.
In the follow up post declaring the results he quote from a number of emails both for and against, with a number of those against saying the thing they don't like about comments is the lack of editorial control. They want to make sure what is written has at least some truth.
To comment or not to comment?
This made me think about the issue of comments on this blog.
Pointless comments annoy me and the obvious answer to the leaving of spam comments would be to remove the ability to leave comments altogether. A little draconian some might say, as comments can be helpful, especially when the commenter has found an issue with or improved on the idea in the post. Also, if comments do help create a community, then surely this action would be shooting this nascent website in the foot.
The trouble is, if the quality of the comments is as important as the number then perhaps allowing commenting without moderation or filtering is doing more harm than good?
This has led me to a number of questions about the importance of comments within blogs and there part in building that stickiness factor that everyone wants for their site.
Does having comments enabled make a visitor feel more attached to a site?
Part of the argument for having comments enabled on a blog is to encourage visitor interaction and thereby increase the feeling of attachment to the site. The idea seams to be that if you can add your two penneth to the discussion then it's more personal.
But is this really the case? Personally I go to a blog because I want a specific piece of information, I wish to read a specific persons point of view or it just happens to be what is returned when I do a search. I have very little loyalty to blogs and those that I do read regularly, I very rarely read past the end of the original post.
Do people actually read comments?
Personally I don't tend to read the comments to closely. Depending on the subject of the article, I will skim over them and read only those that seam to add something worth while.
Unfortunately, all to often, a large number of comments seem to be the pointless, "me to" spam comments, which add nothing to the subject being discussed.
Personally I feel a large number of these type of comments detracts from the posting and puts me off reading what could be other, worthwhile points.
Are there better ways of allowing visitor feedback and discussion without adding standard comments?
If we assume that the open comments section is not the best medium for allow follow up discussion and comment on a blog post, but visitor feed back is wanted, are there other, better ways of oing this?
One option is to force comments to be moderated before being displayed. This would allow editors to remove those comments that add little or nothing to the post, while allowing visitor to air their views on the subject.
Another possibility is to allow users email their points of view to the editor. These emails can then be used as a basis for a follow up post.
Lastly, there is the option to list posts on other blogs that that link back to your post by using the trackback or pingback protocols. These technologies allow blogging platforms to find posts on other sites that contain a specially formatted link back to the current post.
Will I be removing comments from my blog?
Unrestricted comments are not great and can easily be abused. While all the options I've mentioned have their merits, they also have their down sides.
Moderation of comments could lead to a feeling of censorship and could also lead to a large amount of work as the number of post on the site grows.
Emailing of comments leads to a need to revisit subjects, which may not fit with the editors view of their site. E mailers could soon feel that they are not being listened to if their views are not regularly aired in follow up posts.
Trackback and pingback technologies require the commenter to have access to a blog and certain level of technical skill to know how the trackback and pingback protocols work.
I think for the moment, I will leave open comments on posts on this blog, while reserving the right to delete anything that feel is worthless spam.