You Do Read Me!
Actually, I mean to say that someone is reading the CELT…sort of. Thanks to Technorati (I guess) Charles Nelson found his way to Midway 7 of the CELT and saw my editorial comment about how bloggers with blogs (like his) which do not enable readers to post comments seem to be missing the whole point of the medium. Here is the comment that he left at the CELT homepage:
“This is the blogger ”who seem[s] to be missing the point.” I’m not against comments; it’s just that I don’t have time to respond to them, and somehow, I would feel obligated to, at least to some extent. But I would be interested in your writing more at length on the necessity, or at least the value, of allowing comments directly on the blog, and perhaps why responding to other blogs “at a distance” on our own blogs (especially with the capability of RSS) is not satisfactory. Cordially, Charles”
So, the invitation is to write about:
a) the necessity and/or the value of enabling comments on the blog itself and b) why responding on one’s own blog is not satisfactory
A) Enabling readers to comment on the blog itself is NOT necessary. I didn’t mean to imply that it is. Neither is it valuable to a given blogger if the blogger doesn’t think that it is. I don’t say that to be evasive. A blog is a personal space and if the blogger doesn’t see a value in allowing readers to comment directly upon his own blog, I don’t feel any compulsion to convince him otherwise.
HOWEVER, the very design of blogs indicates that direct reader commentary is desirable at some level to some segment of the blog writing/reading populace. (Personally, my experience has been that this is the majority of the blogging community, but I accept that my experiences are limited.) Conventional web pages did a perfectly good job of publishing text. With the advent of HTML writing/editing software, updating a web page became much easier than it was during the days of writing code and using FTP to upload the documents. Yet, at some point netizens not only wanted an easier way to publish/update web pages, but also more interaction with their readers than conventional web pages were delivering, hence the blog was born. It’s my opinion that people who blog want people to read their writing. I base this opinion on their choice to use the medium which, as I’ve said already, is designed for reader commentary. So if one of the major purposes of the blog format is to provide more interaction between reader and author and a blogger disables the function of the blog which allows for this interaction, then it appears to me that the blogger is missing the point of the medium.
That being said, Charles obviously isn’t opposed to contact with his readers. If he were, then 1) he would not provide a legitimate e-mail address on his blog and 2) he wouldn’t have written the aforementioned comment. Also, I can see how some bloggers might want to put up a sort gate to ward off what might be seen as a waste of time. (I’m not suggesting that this is Charles’ position at all.) Think about it: not everyone who comments says something of interest or value. If a reader were required to go through the (miniscule) extra step of composing an actual e-mail instead of spewing his nonsense immediately at the end of the post, then the reader may not bother. Consequently, the blogger is spared reading and moderating that comment.
B) Responding to reader commentary (however it reaches the blogger) by way of one’s own blog can be satisfactory. I suppose that determination has to be made by the blogger and the commenter. I’m satisfied by responding to comments with a post (obviously). I’m not sure that I’m always satisfied to have my comments responded to in this manner since I don’t have an RSS aggregator. Then again, if I’m genuinely interested in someone’s response to my comments, I will check back from time to time or subscribe to an e-mail alert associated with that post.
So that’s my attempt at responding to Charles‘ comment, which was originally submitted through the comment feature of the CELT home URL, by way of a post on my blogfolio.
2 Comments
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I just posted my own position on commenting before I saw what you had written.
You’re right that most bloggers prefer comments directly on the blog. No one in the education community seems to questioning whether it’s the best approach to facilitate learning.
In my post, I take up that point, summarizing four reasons for not having comments directly on a blog:
1. time
2. flame wars
3. having a more reflective conversation
4. reducing confirmation bias
The last two are my primary reasons for not having comments at the present and are directly related to my goal of learning, a goal most educators pursue. It’s a rather lengthy (wordy?) post, but it provides a better explanation than this brief comment.
Thanks Charles.
It’s late and I should be in bed instead of scanning your post but my quick impression is that you’ve got some
valid reasons for not enabling comments. I can’t say that I think they’re all valid but maybe after I give it some serious reflection I might.
That being said, I keep a professional blog in order to engage with other ELT professionals who might say something that can help me improve my teaching. (As you imagine, I don’t see so much traffic through my blog that I am in danger of being over run by inane commentary.)
Cheers!