Blog: 
Aug
Apr
Feb
Nov
Reasons To Say “No Comments”
Oct
Sep
Jun
Apr
Feb
As Turning Left Against Traffic barrels into
another year, readers and dissenters seem to offer one
unifying query. Why does this blog refuse to permit comments?
For the answer to this puzzling question, you will need
to head down an electronic rabbit hole. Namely: venturing
past this teaser paragraph into the heart of the post.
Demonstrating freedom of speech on Norman
Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech”
to illustrate that I have the right to prevent you
from commenting at my website.
Let Me Count The Ways
We present myriad objections to blog comments, ranging from
reasoned arguments to simple whining. The overarching justification,
though, is that blog comments are a case of gilding the
lily. Some wondrous and prodigious architects have
already built us a glorious hack
that not only lets you use eBay to auction off
sartorial tragedies but also provides
for the most powerful and democratic self-publishing platform in
all of human history. With only a whiff of bandwidth and the most paltry
of hardware, practically anyone can offer commentary on any topic.
We can use blogs to talk about anything, including other blogs.
Yet another technology for commentary is redundant.
Technology Stinks
The easiest reason to avoid using something is out of frustration.
(Note: I
frequently
rant
about
miserable
failures
in
visual,
interface
and
technical
design.) Blog comment technology,
however, stands out as an exceedingly pathetic segment of the source
code of the web. Among the rich tapestry of discourse and
the inconceivable diversity of content, commerce and cacophony online,
blog comments emerge as squat rectangles stapled to other web
pages. They comprise a tower of bland, daisy-chained
Post-It™ notes stuck to the bottom rail of everything.
A blog post is an entire canvas,
yet we must craft a response while scrunched up inside a tiny
box. Each reply is made in isolation, unaware of other comments
being typed at the same time on the same topic.
Most blog comment systems require yet another username
and password. And just like email, blog comments are
plagued by spam,
so bloggers must fritter away time moderating incoming
messages. This punctuated agony is further extended
when bloggers leap to their own defense in
their own comments. The circle does not end.
The center cannot hold.
The most embarrassing aspect of comment technology is best
understood through contrast with comparable systems. Writing on a
computer is called word processing, a term in use for a
mere 39 years.
When you produce a document via keyboard and mouse, you
don’t just type plain text into form fields. For
decades, software has imbued users with god-like control over
every imaginable aspect of layout, color, typeface and
imagery. We have long enjoyed revision control, collaborative
editing and the ability to freely track changes and mark up
any part of any document with asides, suggestions or invectives.
Yet blog comments rarely offer any of these venerated features.
They are hasty scrawls appended to complete works, which
makes about as much sense as responding to a moving musical
performance with a spontaneous a cappella howled into
an long, echoing tube. One form does not befit the other.
Blog comments also ruin the most pervasive and least understood
acronym of our times. The U stands for uniform
and the R for resource, and thus a web address is
supposed to point towards a place which retains its essence
and utility for all eternity. Comments often outweigh the
original post—like a mob carrying off a random artifact.
And the L for location (or more properly, I
for identifier) ought to suggest the address form a
suitable preview of what the page author intended. Yet URLs
that reference blog comments may no longer reflect the
tiny minority of words at the top now overshadowed by the
barnacle-encrusted hull. That cruft grows ever downward.
Your comments haphazardly glued onto my commentary
is just bad tech.
What Plato Said
We interrupt this post for a Latin phrase: Quis custodiet
ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchers? Who will guard
the guardians? Such questions not only stump overachievers
in freshman philosophy courses but also highlight a fundamental
weakness of blog comments: moderation requires adjudication.
If there are messages that can be inserted and censored, how
can anyone know whether the chain of comments reveal the whole
truth?
The mere presence of comments breeds suspicion. Letting
some people through the gate implies there are others forced
to wait outside. Publishing supportive comments suggests that
you may have trimmed or entirely rejected some long-winded,
thoroughly-researched diatribe. If people can post
comments on your blog, people will also wonder if there
are other comments from other visitors that mysteriously
fail to appear.
Also: sockpuppets. If commentary implies authority and
relevance, a blogger can easily generate a few fake personas
to serve as an artificial cheerleading squad. Perhaps
no self-respecting ethical individual would blather on their
own blog using a made-up name, but there is no way for a
reader to tell the difference between an earnest comment
and a willful deception. At best, enabling blog comments
suggests the potential for malfeasance. At worst, your
every visitor sees your green pastures as
astroturf.
Disparity of Discourse
All writers share the curse of ego. We think we have something
to say and thus concoct tasty phrases in hopes of finding
thirsty minds. That you can type a few words of encouragement,
hatred or profanity does not establish parity in our respective
efforts. Blogging is writing, and writing is the craft
of words. Commenting is scribbling notes in the electronic margin.
Why should I publish the half-hearted work of a few seconds
alongside what I labored for hours to produce? To call upon our
mutual education at Sesame Street, “One of these things is
not like the other.”
Plus, your locally grown, wholly organic edition of
Turning Left Against Traffic has all kinds of juicy
extras. These include Photoshop hack jobs
such as how-to books,
award plaques,
coin-op car stereos,
federal seals,
ravenous cellphones and
headstones for pink bunnies.
You get interactive educational demos which illustrate
programmer incompetence and measure
francophilia. There’s
amateur musicology
and branded
versus
badges. You get complete
holiday parodies and
code deconstructions. There’s
even the occasional use of
propositional logic on
corporate groupthink. Plus, a screencast is coming! Can you really produce
a commensurate response from the inside of a text-only black rectangle?
Get Your Own Damn Blog
It used to be that the web was an elite space, reserved for those with
a stunning combination of erudition and technical wizardry. To post online
required not only a complete knowledge of obscure industry acronyms
but a split infinitive or spliced comma would generate a debris field
of digital scorn. Back then, the web was occupied by a few. No longer
are we alone. In the words
of Clay Shirky: “Here Comes Everybody.”
Today, anybody can get a blog without any technical
knowledge or even a credit card. Why should I give you a broken crayon to
mark up one corner of my masterpiece when you can get your own canvas for free?
Feel free to comment on my blog, but don’t expect to do it
at my blog. Instead, take one minute and ten seconds to
a blog of your own (direct link):
Solid Water in Gehenna
One great way to look foolish is to fiendishly cling to a principle and
then later sheepishly recant. I might do that. Dave Winer (who has been at this
so long that the BBC calls him the “father of blogging”) once
explained his perspective on why he did not allow
others to write notes on his blog: Comments interfere with the natural
expression of the unedited voice of an individual. A few months later,
he flip-flopped on the subject and published a statement on his deletion policy. If the protoblogger can change his mind,
I can too.
Concluding, Predicting
Since you’ve endured to the bottom of this knowing that you won’t be
able to leave a comment, at least allow me to summarize my points. The whole
purpose of blogging is for anybody to be able to talk about anything without
fear of censorship and without any additional technical limitations.
Comments are a weak, unnecessary duplication of this invention, not only because
they attract spam, personal attacks and drivel, but especially since
making your own blog is easy and free.
As the web continues to trend away from publication and toward conversation, I believe
comments will become less prevalent. The worst place to store your ideas is
on someone else’s site. The best and safest way to talk is to ensure that you are
only responsible for what you say, not for managing scores of messages hanging off your site
like shimmering algae.
Finally, we must dismiss the seductive trap that suggests without blog comments there can
be no “community.” This claim is nonsense. Human connections do not arise
from the method by which we connect, but despite the limitations of that
method. That’s why the best conversations happen in the hall after the
lecture, why the parody is often more endearing than the original. We must
stop obsessing over enabling self-expression via tiny boxes. We must instead
have faith that those with something to say will use the most free and
uncensored medium of all time to find a way to say it—without
anyone’s permission.
Comments limit discourse. They require that we constrain our speech to the pathetic
features of their technology and the whims and policies of the host. Start your
own blog. Join the conversation. Control what you contribute.
Further Reading:
Would you like to leave a comment?
Read this.
###
My pet theory (which has yet to be claimed by
some assiduous graduate student) is that every
conceivable literary or cultural reference
first appeared in The Simpsons or Shakespeare.
As for “gilding the lily”, see
King John (1595): “To gild refined
gold, to paint the lily.” The phrase means:
“To make superfluous additions to what is
already complete.”
I might be opposed to the idea of hosting
comments on blogs, but that doesn’t mean
I will refuse to participate. If you allow
anyone to leave notes on your site, expect me
to show up eventually. However, my comment
might 