I Couldn't Possibly Comment

A couple of consecutive posts by Naithin at Time To Loot had me leaving comments, hinting I might have to write reply posts of my own, so I thought I'd combine the two responses into one post here today. It's taking a bit of a risk - Naithin might drop a third post tomorrow and start the whole thing rolling again - but you have to get on the bus sometime...

The first post was a very restrained and polite reaction, not in any way a rant, about something I remember being a little less sanguine about last year, namely the lack of on-site commenting in many of the newer blogs. 

In part this is attributable to the current fashion for minimalism, a trend I otherwise rather like. Many of the new wave of blogs look sleek and stylish and feel very comfortable on the eye. There's an interest in design and aesthetics that's welcome after years of gaming blogs that just want to get the job done and don't care to get all dressed up to do it.

What the minimal look gains in style, though, it loses in function. Not in every case but in what certainly feels to me, and clearly felt to Naithin, as too many. 

A few of these blogs operate as completely static websites, neither allowing or expecting any interaction with the reader. In a way, that's the better option. It is, at least, unambiguous. Here's something I wrote. Read it. End of Message. 

The odd thing about that is that a large part of the drive towards minimalism appears to be coming from a wish to escape the corporate nature of the new web and return to the glory days before the billionaires and tech bros got their claws into it but ultra-flat websites seem to hark back not to the noughties or even the late nineties but to the very first time I ever web-browsed, in the early 'nineties, when I'd just read websites because that's all you could do with them.  

More of the minimalist blogs prefer to offer some means of leaving feedback, just not on the blog itself, which must remain pristine. If you have thoughts or questions or wish to make a comment, you're invited to send an email or to visit the author's preferred social media platform and interact with them there.

Email is fine if your goal is to talk directly with the writer of the post. As I said in a comment to Naithin, I find emailing complete strangers a bit weird (I said "creepy" but I'll revise that to "uncomfortable", like having to talk to someone who doesn't understand or respect the concept of personal space.) but I grant that may just be me. 

Whatever your personal feelings about sending emails to strangers, though, what's objectively true is that only you and the person you're emailing are going to see it. If you want to keep your comments private then I guess that makes sense. There's an email address on this blog somewhere that, very, very occasionally, someone will use to get in touch with me but the handful of times it's happened it's never been to leave a comment on a post.

Generally, comments on blog posts are only in part a communication with the OP. They're also left for the edification or amusement of anyone who reads the blog. Comments are for readers as much as for bloggers. Blogs with active readerships often have comment threads in which readers talk to each other without any further input from the person on whose blog they're holding their chat party.

Email is completely useless as far as that kind of communication goes but social media is built for it, so I can see why some bloggers might like to carry any discussion over to their preferred platform. They already have an audience there and it's more than likely they're cross-promoting their blog in their social media already, so from their view-point and the perspective of their social media circle, the whole thing is both logical and organic.

Except not for anyone else. For all other readers of the blog, who may not use the particular platform in question (Almost always some outpost of the Fediverse or BlueSky thse days...), the options are to keep their thoughts to themselves and move on or to create a new social media account purely for the purpose of leaving a comment. One of those is frustrating, the other is annoying. Actually both of them are annoying...

To a considerable degree, I'm sympathetic to the disinclination to provide on-blog comment threads. Even on the big, corporate blogging platforms, mostly WordPress or Blogger these days, comment systems are finnicky and awkward. We've all had serious problems just leaving a comment at a blog that does nominally have an option to do so, I'm sure. 

A lot of that derives from a suspicion that having an easily-accessible comment thread is going to mean getting abusive, disturbing or upsetting comments from scary people. Which is a thing that happens, although not as often as all that, thankfully. 

In order to minimize the chance of it happening at all, comment systems frequently require first-time commenters to sign up with a service they otherwise wouldn't need, which isn't much different to joining a new social media platform, or to link that service to one of the big, corporate web presences (Google, Facebook, X) they're already signed up to, which is what minimalist bloggers are trying to avoid dealing with in the first place. It's a vicious circle.

On this blog, I have comments set to the lowest level of security allowed by Blogger and I still get plenty of complaints about it being hard to leave a comment here. Comments are already much harder to leave on blogs than they should be, even when all the work is being done for you. 

I don't code my own websites but I gather from many posts I've read by people who do that adding a custom comment section is one of the more difficult aspects of the craft. It's not surprising if people really don't want to get into it, given they probably aren't keen on the whole concept to begin with.

And finally, there are some bloggers who have very sound and understandable personal reasons for not wanting to open themselves to the exposure of public comments. I get all of this. The reasons for the absence of comment options on blogs is very understandable.

Which doesn't make it any the less annoying for the reader. 

In a few cases it is apparent that the "blogger" just doesn't want comments because they're really running a low-profile website, which is fine. I'm good with having a few websites in my RSS feed that look a bit like blogs but aren't really. 

The rest, though, the ones that do seem to be blogs but on which I can't leave comments, I find problematic. Ironically, the ones that don't interest me are the ones I'm more likely to keep reading (Or glancing at...) I wouldn't be leaving comments on them anyway, so why would I care that I can't? Or even notice, for that matter.

The consistently interesting ones are in the middle in terms of irritation factor. Their content is good enough to feel rewarding in itself so I'm likely to carry on reading them and even look forward to new posts. After a period of frustration with not being able to comment, I'll settle into a mildly disgruntled acceptance, where I treat the blog as a website even though it really does look and feel like a blog. It's a trade-off and a compromise.

The real stinkers, though, are the intermittently engaging blogs, where mostly I wouldn't be commenting anyway but once in a while something comes up that I really want my say on. Those are the times when I get very grumpy and start unfollowing people.

And none of it is ever much of a problem at all except during Blaugust. The rest of the year, who cares? None of my business. You, as they say, do you. Knock yourself out. Other out-of-date cliches are available.

For Blaugust, though, it has long been an understanding that bloggers support each other by leaving comments on other bloggers' blogs. And it's always been deemed especially important that the more established bloggers should make an extra effort to get out there, read the new blogs from the new Blaugustinians, and leave comments wherever possible. 

It's supposed to be encouraging. It's supposed to foster a sense of community. It's supposed to express solidarity and support. 

It's also always been assumed to be something new bloggers will appreciate. 

So what happens when it's not and they don't? When said new bloggers, many of whom aren't even new in any sense other than "new to Blaugust", don't invite or even welcome comments and certainly don't want to host comment threads that could potentially turn into conversations about them or their work, between people they don't even know?

I said on Naithin's comment thread (Which I now see has grown into a huge debate that stands as an exemplar of why comment threads are so important and in which several people have already made all the points I've just made, so go me for coming up with them on my own, I guess?)  that static site blogs aren't a good fit for Blaugust but I think what that really means is that Blaugust might need some clearer definitions of what it is and what it's aiming to achieve. 

As Naithin said in reply, it's not an acceptable solution to exclude blogs that don't allow comments. There are, as I've said, good reasons for that. We do have a Discord, of course, which allows for open discussion and which some Blaugustinians are very active on, but again, it's an external social network.

I wonder if perhaps we ought to do some more with the Blaugchievements? People do seem to be motivated by awards. There's already one specifically for leaving a comment on another blog but maybe there should be one just for having a comment section in the first place. And there could be further awards for starting or contributing to comment threads, as opposed to leaving single comments. 

I'm not really the one to brainstorm this, not being much of an Achiever archetype. And people wouldn't be tempted to game it by getting together in advance or just leaving meaningless comments, would they? No, surely not...

So much for Naithin's first post, anyway. A lot of waffle around a topic about which I turn out to have nothing to say that hasn't already been covered in his excellent comment thread. Oh, the irony. Do leave your sarcastic comments in my comment thread...

And so on to Naithin's second post. Blimey, this is going to run long, isn't it? I'd better keep it short.

In fact, let me for once be sensible and also senistive to the valuable time of my readers (A pretentious expression, if ever I heard one.) and hold back the second part for another day. By when, of course, other things may overtake us and it may never appear. Either that or I'll be stuck for ideas and be glad I saved it. One or the other.

Until then, let's just hope Naithin doesn't post another thought-provoking, must-reply piece today or I'll never get ahead of this thing...