I would like to begin by thanking Daring Fireball for breaking the final straw leading to the creation of this blog. If it were not for people writing these sorts of things, then this blog would never have come to be.
You write on your site; I write on mine. That’s a response. I don’t use comments on Wilcox’s site to respond publicly to his pieces, but somehow it’s unfair that he can’t use comments on my site to respond to mine?
I already have my own personal blog and a podcast. Why in the world would I need yet another avenue for personal expression? For many years I have frequently commented on other people’s blogs. I imagine I’ve spent a great deal of time typing a great many words. But why did I do it? Almost all of that was for naught. Well, no more will I type into the aether.
Commenting on the blogs of others is, now that I truly realize it, a pretty big waste of time. Your comment will never get any real attention. Have you ever seen anyone pass around a link to a specific comment? Not often. People share links to posts, not comments. Why choose to write a letter to the editor of one newspaper when you are free to take the front page of another?
Comments are fraught with many other problems as well. They can be lost to the ages when blogs disappear. They can be moderated out of existence. You have to remember you wrote them to revisit the blog and see if there are any replies. Most of your comments are simply lost to time and space as the original blog post becomes old and forgotten. Communities that form around specific sites can give you guff. You sometimes have to maintain registrations at various sites to get commenting privileges, something which Disqus has somewhat mitigated. And let us not forget those sites which do not allow you to comment at all.
Consider a large site like Engadget. Some posts there have thousands of comments. There’s no reason to ever post there. In all likelihood your post will never be read by any human being. Why write something meaningful that will not be read? If what you write is not meaningful, why write it at all?
Therefore, I have completely given up commenting on other blogs. Whenever I feel the need to post a comment, I will simply write my comment here and link to the post to which I am replying. The reason I have made a separate blog for this is because I do not want my commentary on the work of others to pollute the channels containing my own original works.
If only I had done this for as long as comments have existed. Years of my comments would all be collected and preserved in one place instead of scattered to the winds. C’est la vie.
Ironically, I have enabled the commenting feature on this very blog, but perhaps you should reconsider whether you should be using it.
Enjoy.
Had to make a comment. How otherwise I should comment on something you said? I could do like you and make a blog where I do a blogpost, but this text is almost meaningless as a individual peace. This is a reply to You, other people might read it too and get something from this, but first and foremost this is meant for the person who has written this blogpost I’m replying (I mean you Apreche).
If I would make a new blogpost in my blog instead of this reply I would still have to somehow get this text to your attention (this is written for you, remember) so I would have to make a comment or e-mail you the link to my blog. And be serious would you go to my site just to read comment on your blog post (can’t be sure that you read this, but still)?
Now there is also the chance that you or some other reader replies to this comment and that will cause new replies and so on a conversation will start and go on. Ofcourse that conversation could be held in multiple blogs, but I don’t see it useful of necessary.
But maybe we see blogs differently, I’m happy to get comments on my blog, new ways to think about the topic I wrote about, and if comment has something I could reply to I will do so.
Sometimes though there is a place for new blogpost instead of comment, but I think that taking every comment to your own blog is kinda exaggeration, but if it works on you, you’ll keep doing it whatever I say. Just remember if you write something that I can and want comment I will do so.
Clearly you are unaware of blog trackback technology. If you were to write a blog post in reply to my blog post using modern blog software, and you placed a link to my blog post in your blog post, there would be a trackback. I would be notified of your reply post, and a link to your reply post would appear in the comments area as if it were an actual comment. You can read all about trackbacks on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback
I’m aware of trackbacking, but not having done lots of blogging I don’t have really personal experience.
But as I said on my first comment I think there is times when you might want to do a new blogpost on your own blog and when to comment. For example, I think this conversation is more suitable on comments of one blog than done through two blogs and multiple posts.
I think commenting is useful especially when you want to ask something or say something to the writer of the original post.
But I also see the point of this blog and as I said sometimes your own blogpost is better than comment. Maybe I’ll do something like this blog if I ever feel need to talk or write deeply about something I read on some blog, but witch doesn’t fit on my primary blogs theme.
You are correct that a conversation consisting of posts back and forth between two blogs is very bad. I plan for that to never ever happen. Most of the time I comment on another blog, it’s a one-shot and a conversation never develops.
If I want to ask something of the original author, or start a conversation, a blog comment really isn’t the best way to go either. There’s no guarantee they will notice it, especially on an old post. It’s best if those things transfer over to e-mail or instant messaging.
Even this conversation we are having in the form of blog comments is kind of crappy.
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