Measured Responses
Charles poses this question, which I’ll paraphrase:
Which is better for learning: measured response (at a distance) in one’s own blog or direct comments on the post itself?
Ultimately what Charles (and most folks I think) is after are thoughtful responses. I think that the subtext to this question is: Which response is a more thoughtful-one: one that is reflected upon and written out in one’s own blog or one that is dashed off immediately through the comment function of the blog where the post is? When unpacked in this way, it’s easy to see what the answer ought to be.
I think that there is no real dichotomy here. The avenue by which a comment travels to its audience has no affect on the quality of the comment. A well thought-out comment can arrive either through a separate post on a different blog or the comments utility of the original blog. The same is true of a poorly-thought-out comment. That being said, it probably is observable that easy and immediate access to the comment function on the blog facilitates less-than-thoughtful responses to posts. So be it. That’s why we moderate. This probably is an issue for those bloggers who get many, many comments. It’s not an issue for my blogs…or for most bloggers I would venture to guess.
Charles also posts this question:
“What would the blogging community be like if the majority of bloggers moved to a “measured discourse” mode of commenting on the ideas in other blogs? Would we learn more? Would we become better, more thoughtful bloggers? Or not?”
By “measured discourse” Charles means two things. First, a thought-full discourse-meaning that the bloggers reflect upon what they’ve read and then write a response that meaningfully adds to the discourse. Second, a discourse that takes place in the context of individual posts at bloggers’ own blogs and NOT through the comment utility. I don’t have an answer.
Does anyone have any ideas?
1 Comment
I’ve posted again on this topic and considered other possibilities for confirmation bias along with the format of commenting vs. trackback, such as author, audience, and nature of post. On what would a “measured discourse” mode of commenting look like, I wrote:
“Perhaps the analogy of the maturing brain might be a suitable answer. That is, children’s brains have many more neurons than adults do. Part of brain development is the pruning of unneeded neurons and circuits.”
So, with respect to learning, “measured discourse” would be more productive.
On a sidenote, your trackback worked but didn’t show up due to Haloscan limits on character length. I’ve corrected that problem for future posts but not older ones.