Comments like, “You hit the nail right of the head on this subject. You really know what you are talking about, and I will surely come back for more.”

That kind of comment is just a waste of time, doesn’t add to the discussion and is a mere ploy to get a link by commenting. I am not that desperate for comments to settle for this. I feel that many people want comments so badly that they are willing to settle for any type of comments they can get. If one settles for this, it degrades your blog and reflects on the blog owner. It is going to deterrent people away from your blog as well.

Search engines are also looking at quality of comments as well. So, if you allow comments that are full of spam, you devalue your content and that will affect your ranking in the search engines for the blog post.

I had a WordPress plugin made that would allows, a no comment blog to open a specific posts up for commenting. However, even when I do that, 85 to 90 percent of the comments are spam. In my niche, it seems that there is a spam issue and from my experience, I have to agree.

Therefore, I still open up posts for commenting hoping that things change. However, the problem remains the same.

I would love to have discussions about what I have posted on my blog about search engine optimization for WordPress blogs. Hopefully, things will turn about in the future and there will be discussions of something that contains substance, instead of spam.

Oh, but of course there are a lot of similarities as well.

Richard,

Yes, I agree that there’s no ultimate way, but that instead the combination of options is what makes it so great.

Weird about the comments. I use Firefox 2 on my PC as well as on my Mac, and I haven’t experienced that…
Maybe it’s related to the spell-check feature in Firefox 2? Do you have the problem in other web browsers as well, or only Firefox 2 (no need to reply here, you can send me an e-mail: Contact information)?

Thinking about it some more I think the combination of blog to blog, plus comments, plus the other numerous ways you can express your opinion on the net is what makes it great. There is no one way, it’s the combination of them all that I like. I’m still not sold on the “a blog without comments isn’t a blog” thing but each to their own I guess.

Re: the cursor thing. When I add comments to your site it takes an eternity for what I have typed to show up. Maybe it has something to do with firefox version 2??

A blog is more the expression of one people’s opinions and then a lot of other people’s take on it. To me, a blog is sometimes written more professionally, while forums seem to be more casual in the tone. However, there are of course exceptions to this.

The comments are both in blogs and forums threads, comments on blogs are similar. You are right that a blog post is mostly longer (and can be more subject to posing lots of questions) and a forum post is about one question
Both forums and blogs have categories.

It seems to me that someone who leaves a site because they do not have comments enabled is perhaps more interested in expressing their opinion than say someone with a blog that doesn’t allow comments.

While that is surely true for some people, that’s not the reason for me (as stated above in the post and the comments). I rarely comment at other people’s blogs, but I appreciate the option too, if I see any factual faults in it or just have a strong urge to express what I feel.

Blog to blog-connection is fine, but there’s two problems with that:

a) Then you have to have a blog to comment. My take is that everyone should be able to comment, i.e. no discrimination.

b) Far from every blog accepts pingbacks.

With the preview: not sure what you mean with that the cursor has to catch up… Unless you type really fast.

Johan,

A blog is more the expression of one people’s opinions and then a lot of other people’s take on it. To me, a blog is sometimes written more professionally, while forums seem to be more casual in the tone. However, there are of course exceptions to this.

Ron,

I have some friends who use it, and they seem happy with it, but I’ve never tried (or had the time to test it). Do you like it?

Kanashii,

Ah, yes! I just need to hire another web developer to have the time to set it up then.

But yes, it would be nice.

Let me explain my reasoning a little more.

I’m sure that it’s already been said but if I want to comment on another blog I can do it in my own blog and then link to the original post. Personally I think that this creates a much better interconnection of sites and opinions rather than having all the feedback to a post contained within the original blog. This widening of the sites commenting on a post will lead to further comment and eventually, I believe, a more considered and balanced response.

Personally I open comments on most posts and deliberately don’t when I think there will be no benefit.

P.S. Although the “Comment preview” is a nice visual feature it is annoying constantly having to wait for the cursor to catch up and it makes correcting typos quite difficult.

I know that’s the reason you have for it. I understand the risk for flaming, but personally to take the risk but not waste any long reply on people who write comments that are there solely to provoke. However, you do have comments most of the time, so I still think it’s ok…

Lachlan,

Many web developers know who you are, and respect you, so don’t worry.
But, if you fear that it might be risk that they get intimidated, encourage people to comment! It might work, or it might not. But you don’t know till you’ve tried it (I’ve had some crash and burns in this field…).

Regarding your blog and lack of comments: I know that you’re very talented and your posts are often technical topics shedding some light on advanced stuff. Maybe people don’t see the need to comment, or they’re afraid that they will be technically wrong and consequently embarrassed for asking things.

You’re probably right about people not having a need to comment. I keep hearing from various people that I’m apparently quite popular, so I’m sure it’s not because I have no readers. But I hope no-one feels so intimidated by me that they’d be too embarrassed for asking a question.

Personally, I’m not much for labels like web 1.0 or 2.0; either a web site offers interactivity or it doesn’t. No need to give that feature a number…

josue,

Thank you for reading and for discussing this; and, more importantly, understanding that I’m not out to say that anyone not agreeing with me is wrong. The whole point here is to discuss opinions, and express our standpoints.

Bad,

Interesting. We start to see something similar here when it comes to major newspaper’s online presence.

Lachlan,

Regarding your blog and lack of comments: I know that you’re very talented and your posts are often technical topics shedding some light on advanced stuff. Maybe people don’t see the need to comment, or they’re afraid that they will be technically wrong and consequently embarrassed for asking things.

Allowing pingbacks is fine, but what you miss out then is the possibility for all the people that don’t have a web site, to express their opinion in context.

Regardless of whether or not you allow comments directly on your blog, people can and do still comment about things with posts on their own blogs. People like Ian Hickson, for example, who don’t allow comments directly, do allow pingbacks, so if you write something about a post of his and your CMS sends a pingback, it will get linked to and (I assume) he’ll read it.

You can “Have your say in our discussion boards” but their kept away from the main story and it’s a pain to try and link your discussion entry to the blog subject.

Crap!

well, it’s not *that* easy. First i want to keep my domain. Well, that could be handled. Second, i want to keep my design. That is much more complicated. Formerly i offered user selectable style sheets (alternate stylesheet). Up to now i have not found how to support this with blog software. And definitely not with public services.

But indeed i’ll change the whole system. Some day. But not the next few months.

I think, user generated content and interactivity is a web 2.0 feature, not especially a blog feature. So blog is not identical to web 2.0. A blog without comments is a web 1.0 blog. Well, that’s pretty legal.