{"id":220,"date":"2006-02-18T19:35:07","date_gmt":"2006-02-19T00:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2006\/02\/18\/blogs-that-have-comments-are-better\/"},"modified":"2006-02-18T19:35:07","modified_gmt":"2006-02-19T00:35:07","slug":"blogs-that-have-comments-are-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/02\/18\/blogs-that-have-comments-are-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogs that have comments are better"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the rhetorical beating I got the last time<\/a> I broached this subject, I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I can’t help myself. The subject, of course, is blogs and comments, and whether one can (or should) exist without the other. I suppose I should know better than to argue about the nature of blogs with a blog that calls itself Bloggers Blog – and (just so you don’t miss the point) gives its motto as “blogging the blogosphere” – but what the heck. The site, which is written by an author or authors unknown, says this:<\/p>\n

“The argument that blogs are not a blog without comments is silly. Boing Boing<\/a>, the most popular blog on the Internet, has no comments. Michelle Malkin’s blog<\/a> has no comments. Post Secret<\/a> has no comments. Seth Godin’s blog<\/a> has trackbacks but no comments. There aren’t many that would argue these commentless blogs are not blogs.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There may not be many who would argue this, but I feel compelled to wade in there anyway (I hate crowds.) Am I really going to argue that Boing Boing<\/a>, the most popular blog on the Interweb, isn’t a blog? Yes. Or at least, not a very good one. Because I think that’s what we’re talking about here – not what a blog is<\/i> (because there is no definition, or at least nothing that isn’t so vague that you could just as easily replace it with the term “web page”), but what makes a blog good or not. And I think one of the biggest factors, apart from actually having something worthwhile to say, is to have comments, whether you’re Russell Beattie<\/a> or Dave Winer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why? Because blogs are about conversation, dialogue, back-and-forth, the fray (as Derek Powazek’s<\/a> early venture was called) or whatever you want to call it. Yes, as Bloggers Blog and Dave and others have mentioned, you can write a response to something on your own blog and then link to the original post and comment that way<\/a>, but not everyone is going to want (or have the time) to do that. Why leave them out? Maybe they have something to contribute. I would argue that Boing Boing and Post Secret and other sites like that (such as Valleywag<\/a>, which has limited comments by registered users) are actually more like magazines than they are blogs. That doesn’t make them bad. It just makes them less good.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the rhetorical beating I got the last time I broached this subject, I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I can’t help myself. The subject, of course, is blogs and comments, and whether one can (or should) exist without the other. I suppose I should know better than to argue about the nature … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Blogs that have comments are better”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}