On Commenting

I’ve been thinking a bit about commenting on blogs.

I’m sure most people who’ve spend an appreciable amount of time on the internet, and reading blogs, have found themselves responding to a blog post in the comments, and realising after the fifth paragraph that their epic riposte really doesn’t belong in a thread of comments, but as a separate-yet-linked piece of writing itself.

The question is, how to maintain the relationship between their new post, on their own blog, and the original inspiration for their response. “Trackback”, I hear you say! Sure, but that has become fodder for spammers, has it not?

Services like disqus also aim to tackle this to some extent, but I still feel like I ought to own my own opinions. Maybe some kind of spam-protected trackback is the way forward? Maybe this is already a solved problem. It’s quite possible.

Huh.

As an aside, this was inspired by my other post about RailsBizConf. I wanted to respond to Obie in more detail than the questionnaire’s text input for ‘other’ allowed, but believe with increasingly fervour that this, interblah.net, my own grand palace of thought-stuff and nonsense, should be the repository for my opinions. After all, where else can I revise my version of the truth with utter impunity?

I wouldn’t want Obie to think that, by making that post on my blog, I felt that something ought to be said on the topic of conference prices. Rather, I think this is where my comment should live - in a place where it can be easily ignored :)

It’s too easy for commenting to descend into trolling, spamming and anonymous jibing. I figure if you have an opinion, get yourself a blog and post it there.

Any comments? ;)

Update, 2013-01-03

I feel a bit less strongly about this now, because despite the principle being sound, I don’t think anyone is really going to respond on their own blog. Ah well. I’ve enabled Disqus commenting on the site, as an experiment.