Scoble has a post today on comment spam. He concludes that maybe Russ Beattie did the smart thing by turning off comments.
Here’s why I think Scoble is missing the boat on this one.
First, because comments and the interactivity they create are critical for the conversations that blogs are supposed to engender. Otherwise, you’re talking at someone not too them. It’s that simple. No detailed analysis needed.
A blog without some on-site interaction is the functional equivalent of a neighborhood newspaper. It’s solely about reading what the blogger thinks as opposed to discussing the topic. Candidly, I think it’s arrogant to say I’ll tell you what I think, but I don’t care what you think.
Yes, you can have cross-blog conversations in theory, but that just makes it a panel discussion. The people who don’t get linked back to can’t participate. And there are a million reasons why someone might not include another blogger in a cross-blog conversation: you don’t see the post, you get distracted on something else until the topic is stale, you only want to link to other rock stars, etc.
Not to mention all the people who don’t have blogs, who are the people we are supposed to be writing for to begin with.
One of my informal blogging policies is that if someone engages me in a cross-blog conversation, I try to always link back. I do this for two reasons: one, it promotes cross-blog discussion, which I really enjoy; and two, now that Newsome.Org actually gets some traffic, I want to be inclusive. But almost every day I notice a link to something I said earlier that I missed when the topic was fresh. So cross-blog conversations are great, but they are not a substitute for comments. Trying to substitute cross-blog conversation for comments is merely an opportunity for further exclusion, whether intentional or not.
The comment spam problem is legitimate, but let’s don’t get carried away and make the blogosphere less inclusive any more than we’ve stopped using email because we get spam in our inbox.
After all, isn’t stopping almost all comment spam merely a matter of adding a captcha and/or approving comments before they are posted? I do neither at this point (I don’t yet get enough comment spam to make it necessary), but it seems to me that adding those protections is a far better approach than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I want the blogosphere to be more conversational and more inclusive. Getting rid of comments would have the opposite effect.
Newsome.Org 