I never really understood why Author disabled comments on Ani・Nouto, mainly because I am a comment whore; on the whole, I’ve enjoyed the witticisms, benefited from pointers, been introduced to new artists/pr0n as well as being reassured that the posts are not disappearing into a black hole. Thus his post on Os helped me to understand that he is a Man on a Mission.
Events like the ABA aim to build community. While ’spectaculars’ can grab attention and focus minds, the thickness and stickiness of community (like a good gravy) comes from the more mundane practices of everyday animu blogging - such as outgoing links to other posts, something which I try to do in most of my posts.
This is probably due to reading too much academic stuffz in general and Michel de Certeau in particular. But the standard four questions of academic research can sometimes be useful for animu blogging too:
- What’s the point you’re making? [Research question]
- Why should others care? [Relevance]
- How are you going to make your case? [Methodology]
- Who else has written on this already? [Literature Review]
This applies to both good episodic and editorial posts. Outgoing links are kind of like citations / references. They show that you are aware of other points of view. And they are also a useful tool against tl;dr - a shorthand to point readers to information, ideas, arguments that you need not reinvent the wheel rehashing yet again. Some posts, like some seminal academic books or articles, gain classic status by getting cited/linked repeatedly e.g. on AWESOMENESS, the monomyth or Insane Rants Full of Hatred.
Having said that, comments are kind of like peer review or refereeing. Their sheer convenience was also one reason why I was told about Gundam SEED Chara Theatre while Evirus was not. ;)
Wow, I just realized that I’d never actually referred to De Certeau in any of my posts before.
I find it useful to set aside a bookmarks folder For Future Reference/Pingwhoring, but then I’m the type to squirrel away information, not all of which turns out to be useful.
jpmeyer, I’m still not too sure what to make of him. He elevates reading above writing but sure as hell doesn’t practice what he preaches. But always a nice counterpoint to irritate Foucauldian discourse analysts. :P
IKnight, better safe than sorry. ;) It really itches like crawly bugs all over my brain when I just *know* that there’s a good link somewhere but can’t remember exactly because I didn’t note it down at the time!!
People actually read my insane chicken scratchings?
It depends on what you want to give and/or take from blogging, sadly. I would probably be like Author if I didn’t want other viewpoints, counterarguments, or corrections included alongside my posts.
Last time I checked, though, Author only does this to avoid bad comments or something. I just take those in my stride, but apparently he’d do anything to avoid them.
The solution we should all then reach is: MOAR POSTS ABOUT ME!
I’m disappointed that insane rants full of hatred didn’t link to any of my posts!
I am the Keymaster. I post the worst things in the comments fields, EVAR. I am the reason that many blogs require registration or lock their posts. ;)
Having had a high profile blog at one time (for a year or so I was in the Technorati Top 100) I can tell you that audience feedback scales non-linearly.
When you have low traffic and a relatively small core group of readers who comment, it’s fun. When you have a lot more traffic, lousy and malicious commenters increase faster than interesting and polite commenters.
And then the malicious commenters drive out the nice ones, and you’re left with a cesspit.
I had a comment system on my site for a while, a BBS system in fact. And it reached the point where I myself didn’t want to visit it; it was like cleaning out a stable. It was a duty, not a pleasure; something I had to do, not something I wanted to do.
So I shut it down.
Nowadays my traffic is about 1/6th of what it was back then, and I’m writing about unimportant things, and I have comments again, and it works. But if I were to become a lot more popular than I am, maybe doing three times the traffic I do now, I’d probably have to shut comments down again.
NegativeZero, verily insane chicken scratchings hold the key to the future!
Haesslich, I’m not the Gatekeeper but please carry on turning the key on the latest Hinagikuism news!
Os, what about ME!!!? Or Hinano!!!? :P
Steven, good to know that the skipper of the USS Clueless didn’t go down with his ship! Good point about critical mass but I also think that bloggers can also cultivate a particular readership and, thus, style of participation. But I suppose the subculture status of animu also helps impose some natural limits on the rate of growth.
In my opinion, comments are what make up half the blog. Although spam comments that somehow leak through the spam filter are a huge pain in the ass.
Zyl, you can try to cultivate a particular readership and commenting style, for instance by heavy use of the banhammer and active deleting of unpleasant comments.
But that takes a lot of time, and as the number of commenters and comments grows, the job scales with them. Also, there are “griefers”, people who get off on trying to make you miserable. Ban someone like that and they’ll be back, under a different name.
At a certain point it just isn’t possible any more to manage it. A big site like Little Green Footballs gets literally thousands of comments per day. Charles Johnson gave up on trying to manage it a hell of a long time ago.
In Pete’s case, I think his reason for not allowing comments was that he didn’t want the hassle.
Comments are fun because they’re tangible evidence that someone looked at what you’ve said and got something out of it… most of the time. Without them, I’d still be blogging, especially since there are other ways to know that people have taken a look, but I’m not sure I’d be as motivated to do so as I am now. Not that I’m blogging to get comments, but it’s nice to know that people care.
In other words, I’m an attention whore. :3
At the same time, I keep expecting for a negative comment or two to show up, but either I’m not paying attention or someone just hasn’t written one yet. :P