Blackbeard Blog: Five Reasons You Should Delete Positive Comments*
anon
· 2 months ago
great post!
tomewing
· 2 months ago
That took a whole 45 minutes! Poor show, The Internet. :)
(I'm not actually sure you CAN delete Disqus comments, hmm. At least I've never tried.)
Andrew Farrell
· 2 months ago
I can report it for the moderators to 'take action' - I assume these means delete, but possibly there's just a "send in the hit squad" button.
koganbot
· 2 months ago
Damn. I hadn't logged into Google Reader in 24 hours, hence didn't get this when it was hot. But the plan I hatched was going to be more subtle. I was going to say "First."
Tom, here's a serious counterargument, one that you allude to in number 5. Most readers don't participate. So "great post" and the like are ways that they can participate without having to elaborate or give reasons and commentary where they feel inadequate to doing so, or don't have the time. It's like the people who tick the Poptimists polls but don't comment. That they're not commenting doesn't mean that Poptimists fails to inspire debate, conversation, expansion (though the conversation isn't what it once was or what it should be). Tom, as you yourself would point out, that the majority of readers lurk rather than comment doesn't reflect badly on a blog's content, that's just the way things are.
Star ratings and "like" mechanisms are completely lame. I don't think I've ever ticked one. It wasn't until reading your post that I even noticed that tumblr had the mechanism. Yeah, I'm not always that attentive to extraneous things, and I guess "8 people liked this post" is noise that I just tune out. But by "lame" I don't mean that people shouldn't tick them (and notice what I said about Poptimists above, so maybe I'm contradicting myself*), but rather that they push blogs in the direction of popularity contests.
*I'd imagine that clicking "like" feels less like participating than does filling in a poll or typing a brief affirmation.
All Comments
(I'm not actually sure you CAN delete Disqus comments, hmm. At least I've never tried.)
Tom, here's a serious counterargument, one that you allude to in number 5. Most readers don't participate. So "great post" and the like are ways that they can participate without having to elaborate or give reasons and commentary where they feel inadequate to doing so, or don't have the time. It's like the people who tick the Poptimists polls but don't comment. That they're not commenting doesn't mean that Poptimists fails to inspire debate, conversation, expansion (though the conversation isn't what it once was or what it should be). Tom, as you yourself would point out, that the majority of readers lurk rather than comment doesn't reflect badly on a blog's content, that's just the way things are.
Star ratings and "like" mechanisms are completely lame. I don't think I've ever ticked one. It wasn't until reading your post that I even noticed that tumblr had the mechanism. Yeah, I'm not always that attentive to extraneous things, and I guess "8 people liked this post" is noise that I just tune out. But by "lame" I don't mean that people shouldn't tick them (and notice what I said about Poptimists above, so maybe I'm contradicting myself*), but rather that they push blogs in the direction of popularity contests.
*I'd imagine that clicking "like" feels less like participating than does filling in a poll or typing a brief affirmation.