The Great Blaugust Comment Debate
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
Blog Comments
Leaving comments on a post is a perennial talking point among bloggers. A good comment is often encouraging, provides valuable feedback and is also personally rewarding. However, allowing them on your site is also an invitation for assholes to talk bollocks. Setting aside the overall debate, comments per se just seem to be in decline these days. I find that people will respond to a post on Twitter, where they saw the initial link to begin with. Although this is pleasant it doesn’t leave anything permanent associated with the post. But such is the nature of social media. And of course another major stumbling block to leaving comments are the foibles of the various websites and platforms themselves. All too often a site will just ignore or reject your comment. This itself then acts as a future disincentive.
Newbie Blogger Initiative 2016 - Should You Allow Comments on Your Blog?
Comments have been an integral part of blogging since it became a popular activity in the late nineties. If you have a self-hosted blog or use one of the many free services, then by default the ability to leave comments is often enabled. Whether you want this option is another matter altogether and one that poses a potential headache for all bloggers. Allowing comments on your site has both pros and cons and as ever it comes down to you as a blogger to make a decision that you are comfortable with. If you are currently pondering this issue, then here are a few things to consider.