A Pilgrim's Journal

Nearly every blog out there supports comments. Even newspapers are supporting comments now. Everybody wants their say, and everybody seems eager to give them a chance.

So why don't I?

First, let me say it is not because I want to stifle feedback. That is not my goal. But rather, I want to encourage thoughtful feedback and discussion.

You may notice that on some of my blog entries related to advogato, I link to other people's blog posts in my response. This is intentional. Someone may write something. I may respond. He may respond back. This conversation should be visible, via HTML linking, to the readers of both blogs.

If I just added a comment on his blog, the conversation would remain there. My blog readers would be unenlightened. And vice versa.

The size of comments generally does not promote thoughtfulness. It does not reward thoughtfulness. Who really bothers to link to a blog comment? Not nearly as often as people link to blog posts.

I would rather read a shorter conversation of thoughtful posts than wade through a thousand short comments and mini conversations tacked onto the bottom of one thoughtful blog post.

Massively public comments generally detract from a post, in my opinion. There have been many times that I've read an article, thought it was good, and then read something unpleasant in the comments, and moved on, forgetting about the original article entirely. This happens on newspapers and online magazines as well. There are "regulars" on these sites, and their squabbles and arguments are not helpful and do not add anything to the topic.

Why would I want to share with a friend an article that is marred by unsavoury comments?

Of course, on smaller blogs, this is much less of a problem. The regulars are often friends of the author, and the comments are often very positive or at least thoughtful. But do we really need to read five "good post!" comments at the end of a good article? I think not. Better to share it with a friend than congratulate the author. Isn't that what the author wants anyway? More thoughtful readers? If the author truly deserves congratulations, send it by email.

In addition, there is the administration headache of dealing with spam, user accounts, Captchas, and so on. I do not want my blog to be used as a link factory for spammers, nor do I want to have to decide whether to delete a friend's post just because he linked to something self-promoting.

The "check out my product XYZ" style of comments turns a thoughtful blog post into an ad.

If comments are allowed, even more questions pop up. Do you moderate them? Do you censor them? What do you delete? Do you write an Acceptable Use Policy?

Bah.

I would much rather encourage thoughtful discourse in the style of old fashioned letter writing. Have you ever read old letter conversations? Perhaps some old letters between St. Augustine and Jerome? How about old love letters? How about your own old letters?

There is a flow of thought and a degree of thoughtfulness that letters encourage. Each person sits down and reads the whole thing, and then responds to the whole thing, with their own flowing thoughts.

This is what I want to see in the blogosphere. Each writer has their own blog. Each writer responds to others in their own posts on their own blogs. If you don't have a blog, then you write an email to the author, and the author quotes your email in his next blog post.

Slower. More thoughtful. More comprehensive. And it solves the whole spam problem.

This is why this blog does not have comments.