In Defense of No Comment

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  Allen Taylor (6 comments) said,

  I agree. There is more than one approach and many blogs do not accept comments at all. To each his/her own.

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  Quiet Rebel Writer (12 comments) said,

  Although I write this comment with trepidation, worried I’m going to appear as one your asinine commenters you call out, I definitely want to voice my agreement. It’s a pain in the ass to wade through spam and all the other offenders. But it is worth it when you find someone new to the blog, or some terrifically astute observation by a commenter. Blogging without commenting makes sense in some ways, but it’s infinitely richer to invite comments and create a conversation and community. There is absolutely no single path to success (and I ascribe, as you know, to breaking rules to get that success), and so that means bloggers should feel free to do what’s best for their blog.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ QRW

  You have never remotely come close to being one of the idiots. I feel bad that you would think so. You are one of my prized hug people.

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  JoniB (64 comments) said,

  I totally agree that it is within the bloggers right to do as they please with their own “property.” I went over to Men with Pens and read Harry’s rant. I think the thing that bothered him the most was the article from the blogger in question was written in a manner that he felt insulting to him as a reader. Perhaps if that blogger had waited until he/she had calmed down a bit, that would have been a better idea.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  JoniB,

  It is hard to talk about the people who comment without upsetting some, as evidenced by QRW’s comment. It takes a lot for me to consider a commentator an idiot, but I can see how the people who comment might think I was talking about them and feel insulted, which I feel bad about. I knew the risk when I wrote the post though.

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  Harrison McLeod (11 comments) said,

  @JoniB: Yes, you got it right. What bothered James and I the most was the tone of the post. I fully realize that commenting sections are not for everyone and don’t fit in to every business model, that’s fine. I also agree that everyone has the right to choose what they want to do on their blogs. My post was in no way a personal attack on the blogger in question and just because I hardly commented there myself is irrelevant (sorry John). The blogger’s decision was a controversial one and I’ll say it again, it was the execution of the action I had a problem with, not the blogger personally.

  @John: Excellent post, you’ve raised some very good points yourself and I have to say I agree with many of them. And you’re absolutely correct in saying that bloggers have to do what’s right for them.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Harry

  Unfortunately I could not find a link to the original site, so I can’t give an opinion on the way the blogger worded her post. I do think that there was little need for her to even discuss removing her comments section. She could have just done it.

  “just because I hardly commented there myself is irrelevant (sorry John). ”

  I don’t think it is irrelevant for two reasons. The first is that you brought it up in your post, and the second is that more intelligent posts from intelligent commentators might have given her a different view of her community. It isn’t a major point, but I don’t think I made a major point of it in my article either.

  Thanks for commenting here Harry. I value your opinion.

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  James Chartrand - Men with Pens (31 comments) said,

  This is a good post, and of course, we’re not at all saying our way is the highway. I’m sorry if readers took that message away from our post.

  My belief is that any reader could become a client. When you’re in business, that matters. Giving access to readers to bring them closer to your business is only smart. Writing an insulting post and shutting out commentators isn’t - I feel - a smart business move.

  Will people care in three months? No. Will I feel warm about doing business with owners who talk down and insult me? No. Whether that’s a loss to the business owner or not is a question of perception.

  As far as this post goes, yes, comment sections can be a pain in the ass. We receive about 3,000 spam comments a day - however, the most effort on our part is to approve the 5 to 10 new commentators that happen to come by. It takes us about 15 minutes all told. Then we read and respond, and that takes time too (sometimes more than we have).

  I do so because I like people. I blog because I like people. I don’t blog for business first - I blog for myself first. I like talking and socializing and learning and saying, “Hey, how are you today?” If my business failed tomorrow, I would still want this interaction because I believe in people.

  Business, at its core, is about people. Does everyone need a comment section? No, of course not. Are there different ways to use blogs? Oh hell yes. Are there various ways of doing business? Yup.

  But they all need people. And so does your business. People buy.

  @ John - When you mention “more intelligent posts from more intelligent commentators,” I assume you were not referring to me and all my other peers who commented at that blog…

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ James

  3000… You just had to top me didn’t you

  I wish Harry lad left a link to the post. Working from second-hand information is always difficult. I am also sure that your comments were interesting and by no means did I intend to demean your comments or any other comments on her blog. Again, I have never seen the comments on the blog in question because I don’t know who the blogger was.

  As for your defense of comments, I agree. I think they add great value and for me that makes them worth the effort.

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  Naomi Dunford (2 comments) said,

  Ah, the joys of push button publishing. It’s certainly been a wild couple of days.

  The comments on that post — far more so than the post itself, which, by the way, I found completely devastating from someone who said they loved me dearly — were very revealing to me. The level to which people take things personally. The mob mentality. The willingness to agree with someone simply because of who they are and not the accuracy of what they say.

  I was compared to John McCain. My removal of comments was attributed to a possible bad hair day or PMS. Someone suggested a course of action as retribution, then took it back saying “that would just feed the little narcissist, wouldn’t it”. (sic)

  Those types of comments do contribute to a feeling of community that everyone is so keen on, I suppose. But one of the things that I noticed, something that is fairly unique to the blog medium, is the viciousness of people who, by their own admission, had no idea who the blogger in question was. Why? Someone they trusted told them a situation was a certain way, and they didn’t find out what was true and what was not. In this particular case, they couldn’t because my identity wasn’t given.

  I think that things can get out of hand in comments. Harry said, “She outright called her audience lame.” If that was the case — and I have no desire to turn your own comments thread into a semantic argument, so I’ll keep it short here — I could understand some discontent. I don’t know if I would’ve reacted in the manner chosen by some of the commentators, but it certainly would’ve angered me.

  There’s a difference, though, between “You guys are lame” and what I actually said, which was “Lame comments were impacting my writing.” I’m not sure the strangers would’ve been quite so vicious had they known what I’d actually said. But such is the nature of blogging, and such, sometimes, is the strength of the desire people have to chime in with their own comments when they don’t have a damn clue what they’re talking about. Harry at least knows me. I don’t like what he said, but at least he knew who he was criticizing.

  Thanks for the post.

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  Sonia Simone (2 comments) said,

  The very personal nature of blogging means that these things get, well, really personal. Which I thought was extremely unfortunate. Some of the follow-up comments to Harry’s post got pretty nasty.

  I sincerely didn’t see a whisker of difference between the tone of the post where Naomi talked about removing comments and the tone of all the other posts. She certainly tends to put things strongly (as do our Men with Pens), and that can be taken poorly, for sure. It is probably a sign of my own colossal narcissism that I never thought it was my lame comments that poorly affected her blog. But different people read things differently.

  Naomi’s comments were a fabulous hangout. But (if I’m reading her post correctly) from Naomi’s perspective, that hangout wasn’t actually serving the needs of her customers. Maybe she’s right, maybe she’s a hairless PMS-addled John McCain-esque idiot who is tragically, tragically mistaken. We’ll see.

  Hope it is not too disgustingly crass to link drop, but I did a post in January about this very topic. Unfortunately, it’s one of those evergreen subjects. It’s at:

  http://www.remarkable-communication.com/new-media-workshop-what-do-you-do-when-the-conversation-gets-ugly/

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  Karen Swim (10 comments) said,

  John, good post. I read blogs that don’t allow commenting or they just don’t make it easy to comment and these are largely business related blogs. Honestly, it does not bother me in the least. I have a tiny blog but also have noticed the new spam technique say something relevant but link to a spammy site. Akismet catches 99% and I leave them in Spam. I have had clients who read my blog before hiring me and wanted to blog but were intimidated by keeping up with comments, so I understand the desire to provide information but not have the time to manage comments. In blogging there are no “musts” or “shoulds” you find what works for you and go for it. Now, what are the thoughts about bloggers who receive tons of comments but never respond to any of them? I understand that if you’re getting loads of comments it’s tough. I find it hard to manage 20! (Um on my best day). Are people offended by that, do they care? Is a general thank you to everyone acceptable or a cop-out?

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Naomi,

  I appreciate that you stopped by and put a face to the controversy. I’ve read your original post now. While I think you could have been a little nicer, your reasons were about what I expected and I understand them. There are two types of teachers, those who lecture and those who converse and ask opinions. While I tend to prefer those who converse, I understand why a Biology or a Math teacher lectures. Biology is about facts and educated theories, it isn’t about opinions. While what you blog about may have more gray areas, you want it to be about your information and theories, not the general opinions of the crowd. I respect that.

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  James Chartrand - Men with Pens (31 comments) said,

  @ Sonia - Actually, I think you summed it up really nicely. We all see things from different perspectives and with our own personal defense systems working 24/7. We read things one way; other people read it another. But we still stand by the fact that we wanted to discuss a controversial move and share our opinion and not attack the blogger. There’s a huge difference.

  @ Naomi - I’m sorry that some of the comments were difficult. Certainly, you must have expected some people to speak out with their views. We were moderating throughout the day (and still are). If there are comments that you feel are personal attacks against you and not the action, please let me know and I’ll remove them.

  As far as McCain and mob mentality, I’m not 100% sure who McCain is beyond being a presedential candidate and mob mentality doesn’t apply to our comment section - you had some staunch defenders and we welcomed their views.

  Where the “lame commenting” was concerned, I know; this is semantics. Since we comment, we felt we were grouped into that generalization. Whether that’s a question of a personal hangup we have or not is up for debate. I think “some lame commentators” would have helped.

  At any rate, here’s my stance: I don’t agree with the tone. I think the action of shutting down comments is controversial but fine. I, personally, believe that businesses should communicate, but that’s my opinion only, for all it’s worth. I still like you as a person and didn’t want the situation to evolve into a personal attack, which is the very reason that we didn’t offer up links.

  A last point: Sure, some people didn’t think and spoke up on their opinion of an action. Did they get the facts of the specific situation? Some didn’t, no. Should we be faulted for these people’s thoughts and comments? I don’t think so. Everyone can think for themselves. Not all do, but I feel we can’t be held responsible for that.

  I think, too, that this is a situation we can all discuss until the cows come home. Revealing? Not particularly. It’s important not to confuse action with person and opinion with beliefs. But it is interesting to debate the subject.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Sonia

  Cheers to Colossal Narcissism, It is what allows me to stay so humble. I thought your article was informative. Thanks.

  @ Karen

  Replying to every comment is difficult, and I often fail to pull it off. I like to talk to people, but sometimes I have to make a judgment call between responding to comments or writing a new post. I wish blogging paid enough to give it my full attention, but Technical Writing keeps me rolling in the dough, so I have to keep doing it. I work full time and spend two hours a day commuting. I try to exercise every day and I have a social life. I also have a wife and a strong television habit. I try to post twice a day (one job post and one article). On a good day I have enough time left over to respond to comments, but not every day is a good day.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ James

  I happen to live in McCain’s home state. He’s kind of a cranky old man, but his heart is in the right pace (probably). I think they are referring to the fact that he “suspended his campaign” for president, only to reverse himself a day later. Nothing to worry your Quebecois head about.

  As for the rest, I understand. I don’t think Harry’s post was a personal attack (though his feelings seemed a little hurt) but I haven’t followed the comments closely enough to know if those were untoward.

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  Therapy New York (10 comments) said,

  The picture of the cat and dog is really cute. Are those your pets? Wow, you are getting a lot of comments. I like how you have a category for the commentators. I don’t see why anyone would not want to converse with the people that are reading their blog. I understand there is a lot of hard work with reading and answering the comments.

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  Harrison McLeod (11 comments) said,

  @Naomi: I’m sorry if you feel that I misquoted you. The original remark about lameness was rather general and could have been taken several ways. Was I hurt or angry? No, just surprised and a little disappointed with the way the news was delivered.

  Again, the post was not a personal attack and as James said we have been keeping an eye on our comment section for any derogatory remarks.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  Hi Therapy,

  Welcome to the site. I see that you’ve commented on a number of articles today. You are one of those interesting cases I was talking about above. Your comment seems on topic, but for a name you list the title of a web site. Most of your comments ask questions, which is great, but means that I will need to spend time responding. I want to think that your interest is genuine, but because you don’t use an actual name, it seems slightly suspicious and I am wary of spending time answering all of the questions. I don’t mean this as an attack on you, it just illustrates the dilemma I have when maintaining my comments. Paranoia about being abused makes it difficult to interact sometimes.

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  Naomi Dunford (2 comments) said,

  Re: Therapy, tongue placed firmly in cheek. And they ASK me why I turned off comments. ;P

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Naomi

  Just to be clear, I wasn’t accusing Therapy of anything, just illustrating a point.

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  Marie Ann Bailey (52 comments) said,

  John, I really enjoyed your post and all these comments about commenting. And I was going to say that I feel sad that people stoop to ad hominem attacks when someone does something they don’t like (like some of the criticism that Naomi says she received in response to Harry’s post). Then I thought I should read Naomi’s post, the one that got this whole rant going. So I did. And … well … in the context of her website, her tone was a little stronger than previous posts but generally, she seems to write in quite a strong tone.

  The take-home message for me is that perhaps she never should have had a comments section to be begin. That’s what I’m getting out of this whole discussion. Not just, is a comments section good for a blog? But, do you as a blogger want to converse with commentators? If not, well, that shouldn’t stop anyone from subscribing to a blog as long as they find it useful. There are so many blogs out there to comment on.

  So many blogs, so little time.

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  Allen Taylor (6 comments) said,

  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the comments here and really enjoyed the post too, John. Now that I’ve had a chance to read Naomi’s original post, I wonder what the (expletive) fuss is all about. Really!

  Naomi, I love your tone. There are conventionists, prudes, language police, and snobs who will say you shouldn’t drop F-bombs on your business blog or be rude to your customers. I say they’re full of shit. You have to target your content to the people you want to do business with. If those people talk like that, well, then I’d say it’s good marketing.

  As for a no-comment policy, well, it’s your business. And I’m with you on the lame comments. If someone felt personally violated by that then they probably write lame comments (sorry, James, I generally don’t think your comments are lame, but I’ve never read them on Naomi’s blog).

  Bottom line: It is what it is. Like it, love it, hate it, shove it. If you’re happy and your readers are happy then I say shoot the finger. BTW, I love the Ninja book cover I saw in one of your (Naomi’s) blog posts - I LMAO.

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  Sylvia (1 comments) said,

  There are communities where I hang out. There are blogs that I read. There are, very occasionally, communities that I enjoy that are actually simply the comments of blogs. Making Light is a singular example of this.

  But I think it’s odd to insist that a blog must have a community and must have comments. There appears to be an entitlement thing happening here that I’m not sure I understand.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Marie

  I do think that Naomi uses a style designed to provoke an emotional reaction, so it isn’t surprising that the comments were emotional. Whether that is good or bad is another question, and I think she made the call that she was comfortable with.

  @ Allen

  I agree with your bottom line. It is her blog to do with as she pleases. If she doesn’t value community, she shouldn’t be forced to maintain one.

  @ Sylvia

  Well said. Entitlement may be the biggest vice in the world these days.

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  emily august (1 comments) said,

  This post is great. You did a good job of explaining the buckets of different kinds of responses and why they are so frustrating! I forwarded to a few people I know who are just getting started blogging. I especially get annoyed at the Fake Fans. I see that so often and then I feel bad adding a comment of my own, for fear of aligning myself.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Emily

  I do admire the fact that they are moving beyond junk spam to at least clever spam, but they do detract from the quality of the conversation. Nice wedding, btw.

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  Jamie Simmerman (3 comments) said,

  You know, inevitably, it’s only a matter of time before I insert both of my feet into my mouth, then swallow. It’s purely accidental, every time.

  I like comments. Not every blog has them, nor do they need them. Spam bites, community is worth wading through spam for me. I can’t answer for anyone other than myself.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  @ Jamie

  “it’s only a matter of time before I insert both of my feet into my mouth, then swallow.”

  Been there, done that.

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  Jerry Loggins (1 comments) said,

  A good friend of mine that wants to break into newspaper reporting recommended your site to me. I am relatively “new” to blogging and don’t know all of the “ins” and “outs” of it all. I have found that almost all of the comments that I get are “spam” comments designed just to link to porn sites or to casinos or sites that sell tramadol or other medications, which has been disappointing. I really don’t care much if I get comments or not, but getting pretty much all spam has been disappointing. So I was very interested in this post of yours. I’m glad I don’t get as many spam comments as you do! Good luck with your endeavors!

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  Cath Lawson (5 comments) said,

  Hi John - wow - that is not like Harry at all. Ranting is usually James’s bag - and I mean that in the nicest possible way. I like James’s rantings.

  Out of the folk you mentioned - aside from the spammers, the ones that bug me most are the fake fans. I’ve had those folk you mention. One or two have even linked me and claimed I was their favourite blogger. I don’t know if they realise how much that damages their credibility. It doesn’t take most folk long to realise they never read a damn thing.

  Once I identify those fake fans, I’m usually brief in my response to them - I’ll just say thank you and nothing else. Sometimes I’ll even delete them.

  Anyway - now I’m doing a Harry and getting on my soapbox - sorry.

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  John Hewitt (751 comments) said,

  Hi Cath,

  Thats one of the weird things about the fake fans. You can almost always sense that they aren’t what they seem even before you check the link.

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