I’ve decided to buckle down and start posting to my blog on a regular basis. I think I have a voice and plan to someday trick someone into paying me for my written crap. I figure I’d better start with my blog and later on down the road determine if writing is something I’d like to do quasi-professionally (I’d never quit my day job). I’ve done tons of technical writing and have been asked to author regular columns in internal newsletters at two of my jobs. I am often asked to send or ghost write firm-wide email messages. Right now, I just want to get in the habit of writing regularly and recording my daily thoughts with a plan to venture into lighter writing. (I was hoping I could get all that out without using the word ‘musings’. I emphatically do not want to be Peggy Hill.)
Anyway, on to what this thread’s about. Is the ability to comment on blog entries important? My blog’s on a beta-site. This means no one outside the beta community can comment on my entries. Is this important? Do I want comments? I mean, it’d be nice to read some feedback, but I’m not troubled by the fact that I can’t right now. Will I be in the future? Don’t you need to be a member of most blogging communities to comment, anyway?
If posting comments is important, I’d rather know now and transplant my blog now than have to do all this later.
If I want to comment, I want to comment, but I generally only comment on a blog when it’s someone I already know.
On the other hand, I love getting comments. It really just depends on how you feel about feedback. For me, I’m so used to newsgroups/message boards that not getting feedback feels odd.
It depends. Is the subject matter something people are likely to want to comment on? If you’re blogging something likely to generate opinions or thoughts, I’d say having comments is fairly important. I think one of the things people like most about reading blogs is the opportunity to share their opinions with both the blogger and other readers and the interactive aspect of the whole experience. It’s what really sets blogs apart from regular print media.
I used blogspot, and I allowed non-registered people to leave comments. My subject matter wasn’t nearly controversial enough that I was worried that people would be leaving all kinds of awful messages, and it just made it more likely to get feedback from people.
As to whether you’ll care… You probably won’t care until the first time someone says “I love this blog” (as long as it isn’t one of the many blog-spammers, that is). It’s a feeling I didn’t expect, but one I grew to love - getting feedback, whether negative or positive, was just further motivation for me to keep writing, because I knew people were reading, I knew that they were interested, and I knew that they were coming back.
Personally speaking, if I came across a blog I couldn’t comment on, I’d probably lose interest.
It really does depend on the kind of blog. My blog is mostly about my gardening, and I’d love more comments (I currently have, er, two.) I’d like to know how other people solve their gardening problems, how deep they planted their crinums, etc. On the library blogs I read I really think it’s sort of rude not not to have comments, to ignore the professional dialogue. (Walt Crawford agrees with me, so there.) On a personal blog, I don’t know, it’s up to you. Comments can be really good and helpful, but not necessarily. I’d at least enable them. Personally, I’d also put my blog out where everybody can see it, just because it’s kinda scary that way. Which reminds me that I’ve been really slackass on the posting front.
If I may make a recommendation - I’m a member of Everything2, a website devoted to writing with quite a number of semi-professional (and aspiring semi-professional :)) writers; you’re pretty well guaranteed to get feedback on what you write, whereas I’m guessing most folks with blogs don’t have many readers outside of their own circle of friends. It’s the place that’s done more for my writing talents than anything else.
I read one of the links on the front page - something about Friendster - and the article was so unbelievably riddled with links it was almost unreadable. Like someone read the Maddox rant and made a textbook example of what he was talking about.
It’s like Wikipedia on mushrooms, only completely different.
It’s a similar basic concept, in that we’re sort of collaborating on a giant database. But articles on E2 are owned by individual people, and so you can have multiple articles under one title. And there’s no pretense of objectivity, nor nearly as many restrictions on content as Wikipedia has. So people submit fiction, essays, and so forth, not simply encyclopedic content. More value is placed on good writing than at Wikipedia, so even factual information tends to be written in a more engaging style. I mean, the quality is variable, because it’s not uniform and it’s been slowly changing its shape and purposes since it was built. But it’s a pretty cool place.
Different people add more or fewer links to their writeups, and I configure my browser not to underline links anywhere on the web, which makes it easier to ignore the irrelevant ones.
The place baffles me as well, of course. That’s part of the joy.
Which reminds me that I’ve been really slackass on the posting front.