Marc Andreesen Goofs
Marc outlines a bunch of things he's learned about blogging, so far, after five weeks. But he has made a mistake:
I turned off comments on this blog because I was no longer willing to spend the time required to moderate for relevance and civility, and that has me thinking hard about the topic of Internet conversation.
He goes into a long-winded discussion about conversation, one that sort of dies in a handwave about immature tools he might someday use, and how he scours technorati and techmeme to find people writing about what he has been saying. Yes, he allows trackbacks, but closing down comments is pretty much like switching into old school media mode.
Marc -- You're a billionaire, right? Hire someone to vet the comments if you are too busy.
But it's the social side of social media that makes it worthwhile: not just getting lots of eyeballs, Marc.
[pointer: Fred Wilson, who agrees with me.]
"It's the social side of social media that makes it worthwhile."
True, but are comments the best implementation? As Joel mentioned yesterday, Dave Winer may be right. (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/07/20.html)
Trackbacks are better for real conversation. Why? Ownership of ones words, the level playing field they create, and the ability to see a greater context from which the commenter is coming from. Not to mention an easy path for the commenter to relocate posts they've commented on.
Since I didn't include my URL in this comment, which would have been included in a trackback, this may be the last time I see comments on this post. So much for a conversation.
Posted by: Hans | July 21, 2007 at 12:32 AM
And yet you censor your own comments for anythign that disagrees with you, and Umair turns his off entirely for anything that argues against him... what hypocrisy.
Posted by: Ha | July 22, 2007 at 09:44 AM
Personally, I'm ticked off at the fact that when he turned off the comments (which was his prerogative) he also nuked all the already existing comments.
He obviously had no obligation to continue publishing them in perpetuity, but consigning existing comments to the bit-bucket wholesale just because the trolls and spammers started showing up seems rude. Nor, as far as I can tell, can they now be recovered from the Wayback machine.
How is this any different from shutting down a moderated public mailing list and deleting the archives? I would have expected Marc to know better.
Posted by: Michael Bernstein | July 22, 2007 at 12:51 PM