» Why Blog Comments Might Be Broken

Jason Santa Maria recently posted an interesting article about blog comments that I found intriguing and really had me thinking. In his article Jason explains a very common occurrence in which a blog article has received so many comments that new responses get lost in the clutter. The time necessary to read through such a large number of comments and then respond is so great that most people would rather not, or they might respond without reading. Jason has a devised a hypothetical solution, however I can’t help but draw a different solution.

Suggestions from Jason’s Article/Readers

Jason believes that periodic summary comments, which he is calling “milemarkers,” could keep visitors informed. These would work when comments get long and without having to sift through the whole discussion. While I do agree this would do a lot of good and help a large amount of blogs, I can’t help but think on the larger scale this will still be ineffective. The worlds top blogs receive hundreds of comments to an article within hours of posting. Keeping up with this amount of comments across multiple entries would take at least a full time person to manage. In Jason’s original article, reader Steve Killen suggested user submitted milemarkers which is an interesting idea, however only if your blog has a very engaged and helpful audience.

Maybe Comments Are No Longer Effective?

After reading Jason’s article what immediately came to my mind is the possibility that maybe the comment system is broken and can’t be made to scale to larger blogs? Following such large amounts of rapidly changing content might not be possible. There are a number of potential solutions to this problem, including threaded comments, comment RSS feeds, and email notifications. However none of these solutions, including milemarkers, are ideal.

Instead maybe what we really need is a shift in the way of thinking about comments? Maybe there is a new technology that should be developed that would replace comments all together?

Maybe Trackbacks Are an Option?

I have been thinking about it for some time now and the only potential solution I can come up with is removing comments and instead encouraging trackbacks. This is less of a solution and more of a work-around; however it does accomplish two things. First, comments that are left without proper thought and consideration will be drastically reduced, and two it will create conversations where the author is forced to recap the original source. Yes it will exclude those without a blog, which is exactly why it is not ideal.

This is my temporary solution, however I am not satisfied. I will continue to brainstorm potential solutions but it is going to take something truly innovate to solve this problem. I would love to hear what you the readers think, even if it may be ironic considering the context of this article…

12/11

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14 Responses to “Why Blog Comments Might Be Broken”

Jan
December 12th, 2008 at 4:03 am

The problem is that comments are, I don’t know how to put it, too easy to accomplish. They are often written without proper thought or just to say “thank you for the great article”. While this isn’t bad at all, it massively clutters the comments.
Replacing the comment form with an email adress might be an option, for there is more action required from the user.
Threaded comments (if I understood correctly, with replies that follow the original comment) are extremely useful as well.
On top of everything is, of course, moderation. By just acknowledging the “thank you” posts, but not publishing them. Apart from that, the mail system will decrease the amount of, lets say, mindless comments.
James
December 12th, 2008 at 5:04 am

Like you said, “maybe the comment system is broken and can’t be made to scale to larger blogs” - I couldn’t agree more. I am a regular reader of some very busy blogs yet I doubt anybody would ever acknowledge my existence because of the lack of commenting I do.

I don’t see the point in commenting just to say “thank you”, it makes no sense, you’re just cluttering up the comments section and making it harder for the next reader. I either comment to ask a question or to contribute to a discussion/debate (as I am doing here).

Jason highlighted another important issue in his post - many comments are just repeating what has already been said because certain readers don’t have the patience to sit through miles of comments. The real question is, who’s responsibility is it to fix this?

Another point I’d like to make - If an author joins in within the comments I usually see this as an added bonus, people shouldn’t just expect the author to answer everyone’s questions.
chris
December 12th, 2008 at 7:02 am

I can only think of one megasite I visit that does a good job of implementing a way to weed out the “thank you’s” is mininova.org. that site has a good use of the ability to have users thank you the original torrent uploader without having to post a message.

Another alternative is like what is implemented at kotaku.com. they have a hybrid of threaded comments that a user can click on to comment. they nifty part is they use some javascript (jquery?) to hide any additional comments based on that thread that expand if you click a plus sign. Not ideal though because it leaves the policing of “new contributions” up to the discretion of the community. It’s only been in place for a couple months, but it seems to work well so far though.

I don’t know quite what the answer is. When I see comments that stretch for miles, I often give up on commenting because I feel no one is going to read my posting.
Brian Purkiss
December 12th, 2008 at 9:28 am

Hm….
that is interesting…..
I kinda like the idea of a Milemarker.
It would require a bunch of work on the host’s/blogger’s part - but could help keep visitors informed.
Have a “Milemarker” user that posts a comment every so often with a quick recap of the comments posted; and then have the “Milemarker” styled differently or something.

That solution probably wouldn’t work for the massively huge blogs. But it may work for one somewhere in between.
It also kinda depends on the content of the comments. If there are a bunch of “I like this post, keep it up! (but in reality I just want the link!)” type of comments, then that would be pointless. But if the majority of the comments actually have content, then it is a possibility.

Just a thought.
mike
December 12th, 2008 at 9:45 am

I absolutely agree that comments in general don’t work for the majority of the population. But the problem is really a big paradox. Only a fraction of an audience comments in the first place but the more people comment, the smaller that fraction becomes for the reasons that you and Jason outline.

I thought a lot about this problem when I was writing the blog for the Hometown Baghdad web series. We’d have tens of thousands of readers and a hundred or so comments per post, but those hundred comments came from the same 20 people. So my company decided to build a new type of interaction technology for blogs. It’s called the Qwidget and we’re slowly rolling it out as we patch up the bugs and remaining usability issues.

Here’s a post that I wrote about Jason’s milemarker idea: http://qwidget.com/blog/2008/12/navigating-through-the-comment-wasteland/

You can see our solution, the Qwidget, appended to the end of that post. And if you want, you can read a bit about the qwidget and watch a quick demo video at qwidget.com. I’d love to know what you think of it. If you’re interested in participating in our private beta, let me know.
Zinni
December 12th, 2008 at 10:00 am

James,

I totally agree that people should not expect the blog’s author to respond to every comment. If you really need something answered it is much more appropriate to email that person directly.

Chris,

Thanks for informing me of these comment systems, I have not experienced them before and will check them out when I have more time.
Michele
December 12th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

What about sub categorizing comments based on categories that are relevant to the content of the blog, allowing the readers to select the category that they wish to read? For instance, for this particular post, categories could be Thanks, Disagree, Ideas, Trackback, etc. Commenters would be limited to choosing one category for their feedback, and it would get tagged accordingly.

This would allow the author to specify what kind of feedback they were interested in as well.
Cheryl Chung
December 12th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

An expansion on Michele’s idea:

Ask the commenter to suggest keywords for their post. Then make those keywords searchable. You could also implement a “sneak preview” showing say the last 3 comments of each category on the page of the article.
Zinni
December 12th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

Michele & Cheryl,

I see the value in what you both are proposing, however I question its effectiveness? Do you think that this might complicate the conversation rather than foster it?

Also, does doing what you have proposed take the natural flow and context out of the conversation?
Cheryl Chung
December 16th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

Zinni,

“Do you think that this might complicate the conversation rather than foster it?”
Well for sure you’ll be shifting the approach you take for comments. I see separation of subtopics in the comments section as no different from threaded response on say a forum. I believe there’s already WP plug-ins for that? The searchable catagories part will just be taking it one step further. Instead of multiple threads that might be talking about the same topic spread throughout the comments, group them together and display them as a group. I’m no programmer, but that should certainly be doable.

“Also, does doing what you have proposed take the natural flow and context out of the conversation?”
Good question. I think the conversation flow will definitely be affected. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing I’m not so sure on. You’ll now have categories for newcomers to readily find topics within the comments, however you do run into problems if the conversation shifts in a different direction.

For example if the original topic is on typography and the focus is then shifted to color and contrast… clearly the two belongs to separate “categories”. Yet how do you inform existing readers of the thread that the conversation continues in a different category?

You either need a pointer directing to the new section or also display them in the same thread with an indication that new post you make will now also be found in a separate category. It gets messy. Clearly it needs to be thought out some more. Can you think of any other way? Or is this too complicated to be bothered with?
Zinni
December 16th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

@Cheryl

I am personally always in favor of simplicity when it comes to technology. Overly complicated items scare most users away, however this may not be a factor in highly educated niche segments.

So in most cases I think that it may be too complicated. This is not to say it couldn’t work, however most likely not in a critical mass sort of way.
sweeflyEldeds
December 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

The good resource is informative and actual
NulpOrarp
February 10th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

fascinating and educational, but would participate in something more on this topic?
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