Look at me, joining in on a Blaugust discussion topic!

There has been a whole side discussion on the Blaugust Discord about comments which has yielded a few posts.  I’ll link to some of those at the end of the post.

Generally speaking, I like having comments on my posts here on the blog.  Even here, on the internet, where the second or third rule is “never read the comments,”  I like the engagement it indicates as well as having them joined to the original post here in a single location.  One of the things that makes me wish that WP.com would get their act together on their Activity Pub integration is that it allows somebody in the Fediverse… which mostly just means Mastodon at this point… to leave a comment there and have it show up here on the blog.  It was like magic… except for all the other problems.  Maybe some day I will get back to that.  But for now to leave a comment on the blog you have to come here to the blog.

But that is about being the blogger.  I wanted to turn things around and look at this from the reader’s perspective… well, my perspective as a reader… and address comments, or what will keep me from leaving one.

Don’t Allow Comments

If I can’t leave a comment, then I can’t leave a comment.  Easy, peasey, lemon squeezy.

I am somewhat indifferent to your choice on the matter, within some parameters.  It is your site to do with as you wish.  Discussions around blog comments and moderation and what not have been around for as long as blogs, and there was a stretch when the usual analogy was that your blog isn’t the public square but your own home, and you are completely within your rights to set your own rules there.

There was also an anti-comment school of thought back in the day that argued that you don’t get to go in and leave a comment for everybody to see the the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, so what makes you think your opinion should be welcome or allowed anywhere else?  That argument has fallen a bit by the wayside, but still has some miles left in it.

Then there are worries about spam and harassment, both of which are real.  I have experienced a bit of that here, even on my quiet little corner of the internet.

And while I am fine with not being able to comment, you should be as well.  If your blogging includes a lot of titles with questions or posts that seem to invite interaction or are just obviously trolling for responses that you do not allow, I will probably cease visiting after not too long.

Write About Topics on which I Won’t Bother to Comment

Another easy one.  I am unlikely to comment on things about which I am uninformed… for example K-Pop (or pretty much any music recorded after Uptown Funk) or painting Warhammer 40K miniatures or creating tiny model train layouts that fit in a suitcase… because I am not sure I have anything of value to add to the discussion.  If only others on social media… where I delete 4 out of 5 of my replies to things because I ask myself that “value” question… would do the same, right?

Occasionally I will add in something along the lines of “I got that reference!” but mostly I keep even that to myself.

I am mostly too old to be picking fights or to feel compelled to get senpai to notice me, so I block or mute or avoid the provocations… don’t feed the trolls… and leave the rest on their own.

What am I interested in these days?  Mostly stuff I write about on the blog… which is also a reason I might not comment, but we’ll get to that.

Make Me Create an Account in order to Comment

I run into this one more on commercial sites, but the occasional self-hosted blog will have this as well, where they allow comments, but you must create a site specific account in order to leave a comment.

99.9% of the time I run into that I quickly make the decision that I did not want to comment that badly and will move on.  I will still visit the site.  I just won’t ever leave a comment.

I will go along with gaining access with my WordPress or Google account… which over on Blogger can be a surprising chore in and of itself, but I will put in the effort to force the site to recognize me… or some other standard authentication standard.  But creating a new login and password just for your site.  That isn’t happening.

Sending Me Elsewhere to Comment

I mention this one specifically because there was a statement in the discussion by someone who wanted people to email them in lieu of comments and I am going to say right here that is such a vanishingly unlikely possibility that you might as well just say you don’t want comments.

Not that I won’t email people.  But there are maybe five bloggers over the last 19 years that I feel comfortable sending an email to, and they know who they are, because they have received email from me already.  But not recently.  It is kind of a rare thing… largely because we have blogs that allow comments.

Also, I won’t limit this to email.  That was just the trigger.  I will also not go to that PHP forum you setup (you’re going to make me make an account for that, aren’t you?) and I am probably not going to join your Discord server, and if I did I probably wouldn’t say anything, the way I do with almost every other Discord server I am on.

I might, if I follow you somewhere on social media and like/heart/thumbs up a message linking to your post, and maybe even repost it if it was particularly on point, but I am probably not going to comment.  I mean, history shows I will now and then, but mostly no.

You Ignore Comments on you Blog

I might be guilty of this one now and then, though it is usually because I never know what to say to compliments, but will get into an argument/discussion at the slightest provocation… at least here on my own blog.

Still, I do reply to comments.  More than a third of all comments on this blog are from me, usually replying.  So I feel like I do put in the effort at times.

But over there on your blog if I leave comments and never see a response… and if you’re site allows it, even a like or thumbs up or whatever will sate me… I will eventually get the message that, despite the mechanism to support comments, comments do not interest you and I will cease to put in the effort.

Over Moderate Your Comments

I would like to think this one applies more to me of 20 years ago, when I was somewhat more confrontational, but somehow I still see it now and then.

Also, I get that your site might auto-moderate.  Here on my blog you go into the moderation queue if it is the first comment from your IP address or if you have two or more links in your comment or if Askismet just doesn’t like you (it had a dislike of the late Brian Green and I had to fish his comments out of the spam folder every damn time) and I have to approve you later.  But generally, if I can find your comment and it isn’t an ad and it isn’t overly abusive, it ends up on the site.  So I won’t assume if I press the button and don’t see my comment that you spiked it.

But there are times when I ask seemingly simple questions or make a comparison and I see my comment there and then it is gone a week later and I wonder what went wrong.

I know I have a problem in that I write the way I speak.  I have to go in after I write and remove the conjunction from the start of each paragraph, something that works great when speaking but which is awful when reading content.  As such, I am prone to writing things that, had you heard them with the nuance of tone and emphasis, you would have gotten what I meant or at least noted the lack of hostility or the sense of genuine interest.

That all goes away in text and you’re left to the whims of the reader.  I once had a co-worker who would read every memo from headquarters in an angry and demanding tone, emphasizing words to put whatever was sent in the worst possible light… and then would get mad and rant to me over the cube wall about those micromanaging a-holes at HQ.  I would listen patiently and suggest maybe they were overreacting.  But they were having none of it.

(This person listened to Fox for all of their news and and later went full MAGA and I eventually had to block them on all social media.  Shocking development, right?)

Anyway, the point is less about my old coworker and more that people will interpret things in their own lens and may react in unexpected ways.

But the lesson is that if you delete my comments regularly I’ll stop leaving them.  It almost 100% guaranteed to work, if that is what you want.

Tell Me Not to Comment

Directly or indirectly.  If you tell me to “fuck off” I will most assuredly do so.  We will be in full agreement as to the offness to which my fucking has taken me… or something.

But also making everything a fight or complaining about my comments or just generally broadcasting to me that you really only want adoring agreement rather than any discussion.

There are a number of blogs I still read, or even link in my side bar still, where I will never again leave a comment as it was made clear to me that the host thereof did not wish my input.  And there are a few sites I chose no longer to visit because they are such twits in the comments… though they tend to be so in their posts as well, and it is me pointing that out of that which usually gets me into trouble.  Best to just move on.

My Own Strange Rules of Comments

As somebody who has been a blogger for 19 years and a reader of blogs before that… and a forum warrior… and a UseNet user… and a BBS sysop… and a bunch of other things, I have clearly overthought the whole comment thing to the point of having my own internal set of rules around comments.

Many of them are kind of squishy… like asking myself if this adds anything to the conversation… or if the author is somebody is someone who will put up with me, my sense of humor, or my seeming need to grab some tangential, almost off topic aspect of their post and comment on that… or if I am and some of them are hard and fast rules.

I will, for example, never leave more than three comments on any one post on somebody else’s site.  If I need more than three comments either the discussion has gone off course, I am facing somebody who just wants an argument, or I need to turn the whole thing into a blog post on my own site.

The latter is also applies when I realize I am five paragraphs deep into a comment and have yet to hit the submit button.

I end up starting more comments than I submit, usually because I talk myself out of them.  And a good portion of the ones I do leave are short and ill considered… something in the moment… that I often wish I could then edit or delete. (I do this at work to, answer an email quickly, then realize I should have added some context, so have an immediate follow up reply.)

Others on Comments

Anyway, enough about me not leaving comments, I said I would link out to those who have taken up the comment discussion.  Linking them here is not an endorsement of their opinion.  These are in some kind of order… I started chronologically then messed up… and may not be the full extent of the posts.  As always, your mileage might vary.

And, of course, some of what went on was captured in the comments… on the sites that allowed them.

Anyway, do you care that much about my comments or comments in general?  If so, let me know… but don’t send me an email.  Just use the comment section below.