This entry, from a site that I like to read on a daily basis, caught my eye:
Why I Am Considering Getting Rid of Comments . . . | The Big Picture.
If you have already read the article, it may help explain why I didn’t post a comment directly on the site. Instead I offer the text of my email sent to the author, with typos corrected, as follows:
Subject: Blog Related Info
To: thebigpicture@optonline.net;
Date: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:00 PM
I saw your post today (18feb13):
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/02/getting-rid-of-comments/
As a frequent reader of your blog, not registered, never having posted comments directly on your site, yet a daily reader and purveyor/linker of the information you provide, I say you are right on the mark. I, like probably many other readers, don’t have a need or desire to post comments directly on your site. When I find something interesting on any site/blog/what-have-you, I put an entry in MY blog, or pass info via email or other means. I never even opened comments until today, and frankly couldn’t figure out how I could post on your site even if I wanted to. In short, it’s YOUR blog. Congratulations on your success. My blog gets zero comments, even from friends and family. But even so, I wouldn’t feel the slightest desire to post crap posts from various sources, if I did not see some value to the discussion.
I’m sort of new at this, despite 30+ years in software and technology. As I begin to embrace the blog concept, your post today made me think how reasonable it is that I have set my blog to only post approved comments. That’s not tyrannical — it’s my blog — I do what I want with it. No need to explain further, either for you or for me. I guess the difference is I won’t have a large public screaming about the disgrace that I moderate comments. WTF?
For example, another blog I enjoy is Jesse’s Cafe. Never saw a comment there, ever. On the other hand, another favorite is Naked Capitalism, and I find the comments there pretty useful, given so much to read, and so little time. I pass through the comments, at times, to see if I might have skipped over an item in the daily links that was more than I thought it was. Or to see a different point of view offered by regular, recognized commentators. I think that gets to the essence of the problem: how to permit good/valid commentary and weed out the rest of the crap, given human limitations.
Hope you develop this theme further, and publish further on the topic. It’s useful and rings true for lots of readers/writers.
All the best,
Joe Q
