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Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

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Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#121

Post by WorldMaker »

amerkhalid wrote: post #85
turoczy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been blogging in some form or another since the late 90s, but consistently on the same blog for going on 15 years. Like many here, I turned off commenting years ago. My motivation had less to do with spam. (I'm on WordPress and it does a pretty good job with that.) It had more to do with the conversations moving from my site to the social web. Folks wanted to talk about stuff where they already were, rather than…

I have been blogging for twenty years, unfortunately, not on same blog though. But I was also using WordPress and comment spam was virtually nil. For me the big issues was lack of comments. It made my blogs look like no one was reading them. So I turned off comments. Then I realized all other functionality of WordPress was geared towards businesses or marketers. I don't need every blog post to automatically spam all…

My blog dates back in some fashion or another to some point in the 1990s and before the word "blog". It's been through so many different technologies. The only "off-the-shelf" one used Drupal for a few years. Most of the rest were bespoke. Many versions and archives have since been lost though I've tried to keep continuity where I can (the current blog has some URL redirects all the way back from the second version on Drupal after the last major loss of archives).

When going bespoke again after Drupal I decided to outsource comments (to Disqus) knowing full well from previous versions the spam problems and the tools to fight it. That was for a Python/Django blog engine I wrote and used for a few years. I've since moved to an SSG (Jekyll for ease of Github-automated build process; maybe I'll revisit now that Github Actions exist).

A few years back I decided to eliminate all trackers and deeply audit third party JS code on my blog. Disqus of course did not pass the bar I set for myself (and my current feelings about privacy and ad tracking) and I thought I'd replace it with something bespoke maybe, put up a "temporary" warning that comments are currently gone, but I just haven't and I haven't really felt much pressure to. At this point I'm not sure if I should. I miss comments some, but the heyday for comments on my blog was during college (in "the Google Reader era") and was never quite the same since.

I still have the dump of Disqus comments and there are at least a few historic discussions in there (some of which themselves were migrated out of Drupal back in the day) I keep thinking of trying to repost them somehow on the relevant posts, but keep procrastinating that idea as well, in part because I don't know if/how I will turn comments back on in general. I'm not sure if I even need to at this point. I keep wondering if I miss comments only for nostalgia's sake and that era is now so far in the past anyway that there isn't much to gain in the current era with comments on blog posts.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#123

Post by dwheeler »

For me, it's a time issue. I don't have time to moderate blog comments on my own blog, so I disabled comments.

Some people might post some really awesome comments, but a small percentage of people ruin the whole thing. So moderation is a necessity if you're going to allow comments. HN obviously allows comments, but it's because HN has dedicated moderators (thank you!).

Most people are not trolls. But there are enough trolls who pee in the pool that many pools have had to be closed.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#124

Post by fellowniusmonk »

throw10920 wrote: post #118

I see a lot of comments here about post spam. There seems to be a relatively simple solution - require a proof-of-work puzzle to be solved before the server will accept your comment submission. Then put the comment into a review queue anyway. Valid users submit comments very infrequently compared to an automated bot. They won't be inconvenienced if you set the difficulty right, and their environmental impact and elec…

> Then put the comment into a review queue anyway.

> What are the downsides?

Unless you're a professional moderator that is paid for your moderation... time.

The primary thing we have a finite amount of....

No blogger with a blog post of substantial views is well served by a system that requires any moderation on their part at all.

Link to a thoughtful and dedicated moderation platform and let that community decide if your thoughts are worthy of sharing and discussing.

Saves everyone time.

Here's a thought that just struck me, let me try it out:

By not having a comment section you reduce your blogs filter bubble, because without knowing how people feel about your writing your blog post simply becomes a single entry in the aggregate "wisdom of crowds", once you engage a comment section you begin to locally meta cognate on what people think of your position and you end up with less original and diverse thought for the dedicated aggregators to surface.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#125

Post by [deleted] »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #64
rasen58 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn’t HN have botspam then?

Larger forums like HN and Reddit have the economies of scale on their side. They have a lot more time and money to throw on solving the problem than a blogger or someone who runs a phpBB-forum as a hobby.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#126

Post by jonas21 »

rasen58 wrote: post #59
marginalia_nu wrote: post #39

Botspam killed blog comments, same way it killed discussion boards. Even if it's not link spam, the bots are using comment fields for C&C for botnets. Besides that, I think there is a point in removing comments and interactivity in general. They hardly ever invite any interesting discussion. Comments are generally impersonal and low effort and invite a lot of shitty behavior. If you have something substantive to say,…

Why doesn’t HN have botspam then?

HN has @dang!

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#127

Post by jeffreyrogers »

There are a couple of blogs I read that get good comments, but most either do not or have the comments closed. The commonality between the few with good comments section is that the topic of the blog is relatively niche and the commentors tend to have deep subject matter knowledge.

It's worth noting one major exception to this pattern: Marginal Revolution (https://marginalrevolution.com/) is a very general blog, has a large readership, and still gets good comments on it (a lot of trolls too).

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#128

Post by throw10920 »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #124
throw10920 wrote: post #118

I see a lot of comments here about post spam. There seems to be a relatively simple solution - require a proof-of-work puzzle to be solved before the server will accept your comment submission. Then put the comment into a review queue anyway. Valid users submit comments very infrequently compared to an automated bot. They won't be inconvenienced if you set the difficulty right, and their environmental impact and elec…

> Then put the comment into a review queue anyway. > What are the downsides? Unless you're a professional moderator that is paid for your moderation... time. The primary thing we have a finite amount of.... No blogger with a blog post of substantial views is well served by a system that requires any moderation on their part at all. Link to a thoughtful and dedicated moderation platform and let that community decide i…

That's not quite what I meant by "what are the downsides" - I was specifically referring to this system of proof-of-work-required-for-comment-submission, not comments in general.

I agree that moderation requires time, my question was if there are downsides of adding a proof-of-work system specifically relative to the same system without proof-of-work.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#129

Post by axus »

notacoward wrote: post #73
donatj wrote: post #61

Blogging without comments is weird to me. I have a small handful of blogs, one of which just turned 21 years old, and the reason I blog is the comments. I want to hear what others have to say. I want to know when I am wrong. I am not an unquestionable pillar of truth, I am a dude that finds things interesting and wants to talk about it. I want to learn more, and the collective peanut gallery inevitably knows more tha…

Books don't have comment sections either. Neither do plays. Do you think everyone who writes a book or stages a play does so only because of ego? Some do, surely, but many just have information or insight or entertainment they want to make available to others. In some subset of those cases, the incremental value of adding comments is nil (or worse). Maybe it's those who do crave comments who are blogging out of nothi…

The author for "Scary Go Round" comics (which are turned into books) has great conversations with his commenters:

https://badmachinery.com/comic/those-longjohns/#comments

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#130

Post by aproductguy »

I run a pretty large NBA blog, that gets crazy traffic. We decided to spend energy and time moderating comments. Basically we go by "don't be an asshole", and while it's onerous, the community that has sprung up around it is incredible. We have people who've been commenting since 2007, and it was worth it if you have the time to spare. My $0.02
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