5 ms·

I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section. People don't comment unless they ha

I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section. People don't comment unless they have a point that they want to put across, which in 99% of the cases will be something negative. Just look at HN and (ugh) Twitter -- almost every discussion revolves around people trying to find things to complain about. I instead share a contact e-mail. This works as a good deterrent to filter the pointless complainers, while still allowing those who truly need to contact me to have a way to do so. EDIT: Just might need to clarify that I don't mean that HN is overwhelmingly negative, just that the comments usually revolve about nitpicking terms and concepts which would fall into the concept of something "negative".

stavros 5y ago
I haven't had a positive experience with comments on my site (I took them out the other day) but I also didn't have a negative one. Usually people either posted a comment to thank me, or to note something, or to ask a question. I removed the comments because I realized that they weren't worth the extra JS on the page and hassle of moderation.
wink 5y ago
that's a really overly negative view. You can be part of a healthy (small?) community and have normal interaction with your commenters or with the writer, as a commenter. Maybe the trick is to not get to real success numbers, but I could think of dozens of blogs I read with 0-10 comments per post and no discernible amount of trolling, spamming (well, automated tools help ofc) and so on.
- bovermyer 5y ago
  Comments, in my opinion, add nothing to a site. Most of the time they're just noise. Often, they're a distraction. There's the occasional lucid, intelligent comment that truly elevates a post or inspires someone, but they are by far the rarity. On the other hand, I'm speaking of comments on larger sites, not small blogs. I have no interest in allowing comments on my personal blog. If people want to engage me, they will do so directly.
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    You're not talking about small blogs, but, if we talk about them.. there are some blogs like https://scottaaronson.com/blog/ https://scottaaronson.com/blog/ for which the comment section can be often more interesting than the blog itself
darekkay 5y ago
Author here. I get your point about general comment negativity. But I've also received great feedback over the years (it wasn't 1% of all comments). People pointing out errors or out-of-date information, suggesting new ideas or simply saying "thanks". Using any comment system over email is still the preferred way for most people (based on my own comments/emails I receive). Even you decided to write this as a HN comment for everyone to read and discuss instead of sending me an email. And I think that's a good thing!
LinuxBender 5y ago
Could it be that your site topics draw in negative folks? Some topics can evoke emotional feedback. In that case you might consider EchoChamber [1] javascript that stores comments in the browser. This is not my project. When a user submits a comment, echochamber.js will save the comment to the user's LocalStorage, so when they return to the page, they can be confident that their voice is being heard, and feel engaged with your very engaging content. It does not make any HTTP requests. Since LocalStorage is only local, you and your database need not be burdened with other people's opinions. [1] - https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js
- lelanthran 5y ago
  Very poorly named though - one person does not an echo chamber make. They should have named it shadow-banned, because that is what it is doing.
  - moritonal 5y ago
    Haha, it should use ML to generate responses that align with the posters comment xD
    - setr 5y ago
      I’ve seen sites scraping 4chan continuously, and just republishing the chat in a different aesthetic. The strange thing was that you could post to the site, and it would be persisted there, but it wouldn’t get forwarded to 4chan. So you could post effectively, and see continuous conversation, but no one would ever respond. An odd form of self-inflicted hellbanning.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
I also am quite strongly against comment fields. The comment field medium isn't particularly conducive to meaningful and interesting conversations, which is ultimately what I want to promote if I put something on the Internet. At best you get posturing. Emails (or blog posts) require more thought to be put into what's written, and they also even the playing field. It feels a lot more like a conversation compared to the blogger-commenter relation.
- OJFord 5y ago
  Yes, as a reader (and probably if I blogged) I'd rather a well-implemented backlink system (webmention?) - if someone has something meaningful to say well, or a thought out critique that's more than just a 'well actually', they can write their own post refuting (or extending or whatever) the original. If they can't be bothered (or don't blog) then fine, but there's a more limited upside to that comment and we can probably do without it. Especially since the SNR is often so low with spam, referrals, mutually beneficial (supposedly) SEO requests, etc.
baud147258 5y ago
I don't know which blog you've read, but that hasn't been my experience on the websites with comment sections I'm following (acoup.blog, shamusyoung.com), Twitter and HN aren't representative of the whole internet (hell, even on Twitter I can think of many example of people sharing something and receiving positive response). And even if it's negative, it doesn't mean it worthless to have.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Also on HN, even if something is negative it is usually both civil and supported with some degree of reasoning. I can't say that about many other communities where any a lot of disagreement comes with flames and toxicity.
ineedasername 5y ago
I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post. Even when it's critical though, I still see that as highly useful if it is not done from a merely dogmatic viewpoint. Picking apart an idea or argument is very useful in understanding it. This should be done especially if a person disagrees with it because absent dissection it is virtually impossible to pinpoint not just why and what you disagree with, but also whether or not that flaw can be rectified. I've come into conversations at times where I disagreed (or agreed) with something only to see a key component elaborated or additional evidence provided, changing my mind. So, I see a community in HN that ruthlessly dissects ideas. Most things aren't perfect so there will always be some degree of "that's wrong". I don't think that makes HN inherently negative. Though yes, I do occasionally see comments that seem to go out of their way to find flaws peripheral to the topic at hand and inflate them, derailing more productive conversation.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post. That’s why I keep coming back to HN. But even I have to admit that those valuable posts are in the minority of comments these days. You’re right that the HN community tries to dissect everything, but a staggering number of those dissection attempts are coming from people who don’t know what they’re talking about or who didn’t bother reading the article. I’ve seen countless comment sections where the majority of comments are from angry people who clearly didn’t read the article but want to complain about what they assumed the article said. Worse, the bad comments are often extremely confident despite being wrong. This effect is most obvious when you click on a comment section for something you know very deeply, only to see highly upvoted comments saying things that can often be disproved with 2 minutes of Googling. The good comments can still be found, but it takes work to find them. I think Dan Luu said it best: > HN comments are terrible. On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong. Most of the time, there are zero comments from people who know anything about the topic and the top comment is reasonable sounding but totally incorrect. Additionally, many comments are gratuitously mean. His full blog post: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ https://danluu.com/hn-comments/
andrepd 5y ago
>Just look at HN Well no offense but what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad? I quite disagree, hn comment threads are generally quite good quality and civil, and you will find knowledgeable people chiming in. >almost every discussion revolves around people trying to find things to complain about Quite meta x)) Also: here is a blog which definitely wouldn't be the same without comments https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/
- tayo42 5y ago
  > what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad I actually wonder this a lot, strange behavior isn't it? lol
gonzo41 5y ago
I totally agree and in my haste wrote the exact same comment. Ie, don't have a comments section! I think slowing down the speed at which a person can respond will greatly decrease low value content. And probably be better for everyone involved. An example, my local paper is trash. Yet, to comment online I have to register and subscribe and .... it's hard, so I just don't. I don't comment, or read that paper anymore. Which is a somewhat bad example, because I'm not consuming the content. However if something is low quality or I disagree with it, or agree even, I need to pair action with my reaction. I'm pretty busy these days. So to complain or compliment It needs to be good.
rATRIJS 5y ago
Maybe it depends on the topic a blog is about or something else but I have a small blog about photography ( https://50mmf2.com https://50mmf2.com ) and I've had only one slightly negative comment. My blog isn't getting much traffic or many comments though. I would imagine that as something gets more popular it attracts more negative attention. That being said, the more popular niche photography blogs ( mainly about film photography ) have largely positive comments as well. Promoting just an email will yield a much lower communication rate. Which might be OK in some cases but it's also nice to receive comments. As long as they are not terrible...
rsync 5y ago
"I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section." I have developed something I call an "Iceberg Article"[1] which is "... a single page of writing which links to a larger collection of supporting documents, resources and services." One of those supporting resources could be a discussion thread - or even a forum. I don't think every "Iceberg Article" needs to have a discussion - and none of mine do, as of yet. I think it can have its place, however. [1] https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html
Reitet00 5y ago
> People don't comment unless they have a point that they want to put across, which in 99% of the cases will be something negative. Counterpoint: I've created a blog with highly technical content a couple of years ago and put there a simple home-grown commenting system with manual moderation. I expected a lot of low quality content but actually your 99% were rather a 9% and some people spent serious time writing excellent in depth comments, pointing out the limitations of the subject or extending it it one way or another. I guess the quality of the comments on receives is directly proportional to the time taken by the content creator to deliver good quality articles and the site UX in general. Of course there's always some noise and spam but small sites are not Reddit or HN and the comment sections don't necessarily need to reflect what you see here or on other big social sites.
jrochkind1 5y ago
On the blog that I used for software engineering content, I would routinely get helpful things in the comments, people adding on with useful content for other readers. Back when I blogged and people read blogs and commented on them.

stavros 5y ago

I haven't had a positive experience with comments on my site (I took them out the other day) but I also didn't have a negative one. Usually people either posted a comment to thank me, or to note something, or to ask a question. I removed the comments because I realized that they weren't worth the extra JS on the page and hassle of moderation.

wink 5y ago

that's a really overly negative view. You can be part of a healthy (small?) community and have normal interaction with your commenters or with the writer, as a commenter. Maybe the trick is to not get to real success numbers, but I could think of dozens of blogs I read with 0-10 comments per post and no discernible amount of trolling, spamming (well, automated tools help ofc) and so on.

bovermyer 5y ago
Comments, in my opinion, add nothing to a site. Most of the time they're just noise. Often, they're a distraction. There's the occasional lucid, intelligent comment that truly elevates a post or inspires someone, but they are by far the rarity. On the other hand, I'm speaking of comments on larger sites, not small blogs. I have no interest in allowing comments on my personal blog. If people want to engage me, they will do so directly.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  You're not talking about small blogs, but, if we talk about them.. there are some blogs like https://scottaaronson.com/blog/ https://scottaaronson.com/blog/ for which the comment section can be often more interesting than the blog itself

darekkay 5y ago

Author here. I get your point about general comment negativity. But I've also received great feedback over the years (it wasn't 1% of all comments). People pointing out errors or out-of-date information, suggesting new ideas or simply saying "thanks". Using any comment system over email is still the preferred way for most people (based on my own comments/emails I receive). Even you decided to write this as a HN comment for everyone to read and discuss instead of sending me an email. And I think that's a good thing!

LinuxBender 5y ago

Could it be that your site topics draw in negative folks? Some topics can evoke emotional feedback. In that case you might consider EchoChamber [1] javascript that stores comments in the browser. This is not my project. When a user submits a comment, echochamber.js will save the comment to the user's LocalStorage, so when they return to the page, they can be confident that their voice is being heard, and feel engaged with your very engaging content. It does not make any HTTP requests. Since LocalStorage is only local, you and your database need not be burdened with other people's opinions. [1] - https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js

lelanthran 5y ago
Very poorly named though - one person does not an echo chamber make. They should have named it shadow-banned, because that is what it is doing.
- moritonal 5y ago
  Haha, it should use ML to generate responses that align with the posters comment xD
  - setr 5y ago
    I’ve seen sites scraping 4chan continuously, and just republishing the chat in a different aesthetic. The strange thing was that you could post to the site, and it would be persisted there, but it wouldn’t get forwarded to 4chan. So you could post effectively, and see continuous conversation, but no one would ever respond. An odd form of self-inflicted hellbanning.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I also am quite strongly against comment fields. The comment field medium isn't particularly conducive to meaningful and interesting conversations, which is ultimately what I want to promote if I put something on the Internet. At best you get posturing. Emails (or blog posts) require more thought to be put into what's written, and they also even the playing field. It feels a lot more like a conversation compared to the blogger-commenter relation.

OJFord 5y ago
Yes, as a reader (and probably if I blogged) I'd rather a well-implemented backlink system (webmention?) - if someone has something meaningful to say well, or a thought out critique that's more than just a 'well actually', they can write their own post refuting (or extending or whatever) the original. If they can't be bothered (or don't blog) then fine, but there's a more limited upside to that comment and we can probably do without it. Especially since the SNR is often so low with spam, referrals, mutually beneficial (supposedly) SEO requests, etc.

baud147258 5y ago

I don't know which blog you've read, but that hasn't been my experience on the websites with comment sections I'm following (acoup.blog, shamusyoung.com), Twitter and HN aren't representative of the whole internet (hell, even on Twitter I can think of many example of people sharing something and receiving positive response). And even if it's negative, it doesn't mean it worthless to have.

ineedasername 5y ago
Also on HN, even if something is negative it is usually both civil and supported with some degree of reasoning. I can't say that about many other communities where any a lot of disagreement comes with flames and toxicity.

ineedasername 5y ago

I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post. Even when it's critical though, I still see that as highly useful if it is not done from a merely dogmatic viewpoint. Picking apart an idea or argument is very useful in understanding it. This should be done especially if a person disagrees with it because absent dissection it is virtually impossible to pinpoint not just why and what you disagree with, but also whether or not that flaw can be rectified. I've come into conversations at times where I disagreed (or agreed) with something only to see a key component elaborated or additional evidence provided, changing my mind. So, I see a community in HN that ruthlessly dissects ideas. Most things aren't perfect so there will always be some degree of "that's wrong". I don't think that makes HN inherently negative. Though yes, I do occasionally see comments that seem to go out of their way to find flaws peripheral to the topic at hand and inflate them, derailing more productive conversation.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post. That’s why I keep coming back to HN. But even I have to admit that those valuable posts are in the minority of comments these days. You’re right that the HN community tries to dissect everything, but a staggering number of those dissection attempts are coming from people who don’t know what they’re talking about or who didn’t bother reading the article. I’ve seen countless comment sections where the majority of comments are from angry people who clearly didn’t read the article but want to complain about what they assumed the article said. Worse, the bad comments are often extremely confident despite being wrong. This effect is most obvious when you click on a comment section for something you know very deeply, only to see highly upvoted comments saying things that can often be disproved with 2 minutes of Googling. The good comments can still be found, but it takes work to find them. I think Dan Luu said it best: > HN comments are terrible. On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong. Most of the time, there are zero comments from people who know anything about the topic and the top comment is reasonable sounding but totally incorrect. Additionally, many comments are gratuitously mean. His full blog post: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ https://danluu.com/hn-comments/

andrepd 5y ago

>Just look at HN Well no offense but what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad? I quite disagree, hn comment threads are generally quite good quality and civil, and you will find knowledgeable people chiming in. >almost every discussion revolves around people trying to find things to complain about Quite meta x)) Also: here is a blog which definitely wouldn't be the same without comments https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ https://terrytao.wordpress.com/

tayo42 5y ago
> what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad I actually wonder this a lot, strange behavior isn't it? lol

gonzo41 5y ago

I totally agree and in my haste wrote the exact same comment. Ie, don't have a comments section! I think slowing down the speed at which a person can respond will greatly decrease low value content. And probably be better for everyone involved. An example, my local paper is trash. Yet, to comment online I have to register and subscribe and .... it's hard, so I just don't. I don't comment, or read that paper anymore. Which is a somewhat bad example, because I'm not consuming the content. However if something is low quality or I disagree with it, or agree even, I need to pair action with my reaction. I'm pretty busy these days. So to complain or compliment It needs to be good.

rATRIJS 5y ago

Maybe it depends on the topic a blog is about or something else but I have a small blog about photography ( https://50mmf2.com https://50mmf2.com ) and I've had only one slightly negative comment. My blog isn't getting much traffic or many comments though. I would imagine that as something gets more popular it attracts more negative attention. That being said, the more popular niche photography blogs ( mainly about film photography ) have largely positive comments as well. Promoting just an email will yield a much lower communication rate. Which might be OK in some cases but it's also nice to receive comments. As long as they are not terrible...

rsync 5y ago

"I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section." I have developed something I call an "Iceberg Article"[1] which is "... a single page of writing which links to a larger collection of supporting documents, resources and services." One of those supporting resources could be a discussion thread - or even a forum. I don't think every "Iceberg Article" needs to have a discussion - and none of mine do, as of yet. I think it can have its place, however. [1] https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html

Reitet00 5y ago

> People don't comment unless they have a point that they want to put across, which in 99% of the cases will be something negative. Counterpoint: I've created a blog with highly technical content a couple of years ago and put there a simple home-grown commenting system with manual moderation. I expected a lot of low quality content but actually your 99% were rather a 9% and some people spent serious time writing excellent in depth comments, pointing out the limitations of the subject or extending it it one way or another. I guess the quality of the comments on receives is directly proportional to the time taken by the content creator to deliver good quality articles and the site UX in general. Of course there's always some noise and spam but small sites are not Reddit or HN and the comment sections don't necessarily need to reflect what you see here or on other big social sites.

jrochkind1 5y ago

On the blog that I used for software engineering content, I would routinely get helpful things in the comments, people adding on with useful content for other readers. Back when I blogged and people read blogs and commented on them.