Why Blog II: The Comments
posted by Frank Pasquale
I began drafting this series a few weeks ago, before the current controversy over blog comments brewed. I agree with much of what both Jack Balkin and Dan Solove have said on the matter, and it may be an exhausted topic at this point. But I thought I’d just add a few additional thoughts.
Sometimes a blog audience wants to keep a blog clear of comments. For instance, Andrew Sullivan has surveyed his readers on whether they want comments on his very popular blog, and all the votes I’ve seen have been negative. One of his readers writes:
Readers of your blog could opt to not read the comments section, but in truth we would rarely opt not to read them — on your blog or any other blog. Blog comments have the power to hammerlock one’s attention. I think, humans being highway rubberneckers, we’d be impotent to resist looking over the rantings and counter-rantings that would make their way into your Comments Section. Not only would comments be an incredible drain on one’s time . . . but it also exposes readers to the nasty underbelly of blogging.
While most of the current discussion focuses on what can go wrong with comments, there is much that can go right. The comment section allows readers to “glom on” and add a lot to the conversation. I am indebted to many terrific commenters who consistently alert me to interesting sources of information, flaws in my arguments, or material that supports the original post. Even just hearing someone say “great post!” can be really encouraging. Hence my Blackstone ratio of blog commenting: one positive or helpful comment is worth ten negative ones.
But what to do about negative, irrelevant, kvetching, or cavilling comments? I have a few approaches, depending on the identity of the commenter and the nature of the comments.
First, if somebody who frequently has constructive things to say finds something I write troubling or bad, I take it seriously. I try to respond as well as I can, given my time constraints. Just as I’ve been turned off bad article topics by critical conference audiences, I can be turned off a given line of blogging by a good criticism–or at least led to rethink it. To give but a few examples, commenter Daniel Goldberg has forced me to rethink the therapy/enhancement distinction in bioethics; A.J. Sutter’s reading suggestions have led me to European thought that requires me to rethink any sweeping critiques of economics as a discipline; and Patrick S. O’Donnell consistently demonstrates the ongoing relevance and vitality of thinkers frequently dismissed by the bien pensant majority as outside the mainstream. Vigorous debate can enliven many topics:
Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. … Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won’t replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.
This type of conversation is to be treasured, especially because it is open to those outside the academy.
However, for those who always seem to have something negative to say, I have less patience. At one time I aspired to be a bodhisattva of the blogosphere, offering sweet reason to one and all. No longer. Some disputes are about fundamentally different values, not facts. As Mary Ann Case’s fascinating work Feminist Fundamentalism reveals, one of the key rhetorical tropes certain groups employ is to try to portray their own values as unquestionable, while dismissing those of others (or, sadly, the “othered”) as contingent, destructive, or trivial. When a blog commenter tries that move on me, I usually ignore it.
But I also realize that sparring can be fun. Any student of the American political system knows that many elections and changes in public opinion are based on pithy memes that capture the public imagination. Blog post sparring can be a great place to refine such messages for an increasingly ADD culture. Admittedly, you shouldn’t try to trash or perplex the comments of anyone you know (a mistake I’ve made a few times, and regretted.) But snappy, sassy, or sarcastic comebacks are the perfect antidote to a tiresome malcontent.
Links to Series on “Why Blog?”
Why Blog II [above]
Why Blog III: The Audience (upcoming)
Why Blog IV: A Participatory Public Sphere (upcoming)
January 31, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Posted in: Blogging
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Responses (13)
A.J. Sutter - January 31, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Thanks for the kind call-out. Though I’m somewhat abashed at being credited with defending economics as a discipline
. I aimed for the simpler theme that there are more ways of thinking about economics issues than are reflected in American intellectual circles. Often the clearest and most stimulating thinkers aren’t economists.
Confused2L - February 1, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I don’t think any discussion of blog commenting can be complete without looking at the story of Tanta over at Calculated Risk. She started as a commenter at the site and became one of the most informative, and beloved, posters on the mortgage elements of the current economic meltdown.
As a general proposition the more wonkish the blog, the more valuable the comments tend to be. Unfortunately, at the risk of sounding like a teenager complaining about the popularity of his favorite band, the more popular a blog gets the less useful its comments section tends to become. At least, even if not only, because the signal to noise ratio falls off.
Orin Kerr - February 1, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Frank,
I haven’t commented on any of your posts since back in August, when in a long exchange I took away the understanding that you weren’t interested in receiving comments from my more-or-less center or center/right (sometimes libertarian-leaning) perspective. You wrote at the time:
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I appreciate your willingness to read my posts for some time, in spite of the fact you’ve disagreed with my point of view. I hope someday we can get a filter set up on this blog so that people who don’t want my posts can set it to “exclude” for me.
In the end I guess that I am more interested in building a conversation within a community that shares some common foundational premises, rather than the “Sunstein-ian” ideal of bringing people on far opposing sides together.
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It’s been almost 6 months since that exchange, but it seems relevant to the difference you indicate here between “good criticism” that “enlivens” and “those who always seem to have something negative to say” for whom you have “less patience.” Can you say more about the dividing line between good criticism and bad criticism, in your view? Is “good criticism” criticism that shares your ideology, and “bad criticism” criticism that does not share your ideology?
(Oh, and I’ll go back to not commenting on your posts after this thread, as you seemed to prefer; I just thought that your “blogging about blogging” made the question relevant and worth chiming in.)
Paul Horwitz - February 1, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Frank, one question: why shouldn’t one try to trash or “perplex” the comments of anyone one knows? I would have thought it would be better to trash people you know rather than strangers. And, on reflection, a second: should one also not try to praise the comments of anyone one knows? Cheers, Paul
Frank - February 1, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Orin,
All I can say about that exchange is that I’m sorry to have been so combative. I ended up trying to develop a theory that would justify my nasty and sarcastic manner, and in the end it failed. I can’t really reconcile my conduct there and the letter or spirit of this post.
Perhaps my only defense is that I’ve done little to no energy blogging since then, in part because I’ve decided not to do so until I got a chance to read some of the items Jonathan Adler recommended. It’s to my discredit that I have been so delayed in getting to them.
Just as commenters can fall down on the job, so can bloggers. I hope you will accept my sincere apology. Your insights and perspectives are always welcome here.
Frank - February 1, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Paul,
I meant to say “trash or perplex” the person, and I think it’s that personal dimension that’s key. Anonymous commenters enjoy a power imbalance–they know who you are, but you don’t know who they are. So when they are rude or unduly critical, I think they deserve the same treatment in kind.
I’m much easier on praise! I think that just as point-scoring can become a vicious spiral downwards, there can be a virtuous circle upwards of mutual understanding and constructive criticism. That type of virtuous circle probably depends on concentrating on the better contributions of a blogger, or ones that can at least be nudged toward the right direction. As Gadamer might say, with total agreement, there’s no need for discussion; with total disagreement, there’s no possibility of discussion.
Orin Kerr - February 1, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Frank,
That is an extraordinarily generous and kind response. I very much appreciate it, and of course any apologies due I am happy to accept. Looking forward to your blogging in the future.
JohnLopresti - February 1, 2009 at 9:21 pm
As someone who has read both concurring opinions blog, and balkinization, I appreciate CO’s continuation of the policy of activated comments.
At the other site where prof Pasquale has joined the comment-free section, at balkinzation blog, I look forward to reading the amply linked articles by the writer, as he is involved in several fields which have held my somewhat rapt interest in the past decade, namely, tech and health, or, I should say, perhaps more clearly, the merger of those two, with statutory underpinnings.
I have observed the flak at balkinization by many sorts of hackneyed writers, yet admired the capacity of the best principals there in their seemingly effortless attainment of worthwhile levels of writing and research, and their having shared all that with readers of that blog.
As someone interested in interchange of ideas, at least when there is some feasible symmetry of viewpoints, I have learned slowly to skim the dross which has burdened balkinization, a seeming blizzard of the spurious and scurrilous in threads. Consequently, I cheer JackB’s difficult decision after so many years of his having endured that situation.
In a sense, the quantity of time available for research before posting, provides sufficient depth to the material, embueing it with worth irrespective of the thread comments.
From a tech perspective, though not a fiscal one, I immediately compared the Balkinization decision to default to comments=off, with another software platform which provides the administrator a dashboard control to ban commenters based on their web address DNS. There are wider options than simply shutting down interchange.
One of the most successful blog morphs in my experience has occurred at electionlawblog of prof Hasen at LLU. He had to read an average of 300 obscenities/day in his former comments=On format; yet, his energetic pursuit of substantive content has improved his blog immensely after he turned comments to Off a few years ago.
Scotusblog took the large lawfirm tack into the swirl of comment currents; it has an intern who contacts each commenter by email to confirm identity and discuss a bit about who you are before granting a password to post.
There are many possible paradigms. I have appreciated greatly the materials, for example, available at ACSblog and other advocacy entities’ online sites which variously permit or ban comments.
It seems we are in a dynamic ambient, one which elicits the best from us. My own preference is to read and not comment. However, I believe we have traversed some difficult times in the past few years, hopefully many tests of our mettle which need not see repetition.
However all this works out, it is a pleasure to preserve hope balkinization will be one of the foremost in its specialty topics and from its chosen points of the spectra of contemporary views; and I am happy to have seen the recent happenings at concurringopinion, and to have this opportunity to…post a comment on an important discussion’s thread.
Dave - February 3, 2009 at 5:13 am
I’ll echo Orin’s sentiment that Frank’s response was extraordinarily kind. Particularly since, after going back and reading the old exchange, it seems to me that the conflict there involved two people, not one.
On another note, in thinking about blog comments, I went back to check out a thread that I had commented on a few weeks ago, and… it seems to have disappeared. Do posts disappear on Co-Op? This particular post was written by Frank and seemed to me to be a “sweeping critique of economics as a discipline,” and involved cites to Krugman and something along the lines that economic policy choices are fundamentally moral. My comments ran to something about how tiresome such sweeping critiques were becoming.
Given the current topic, I wanted to look at my comment to see if there was any failure of civility in my writing. But, alas, after a fairly exhaustive search, the post seems to be gone.
Any ideas? Have I gone crazy and imagined the whole thing? Or does “rethink(ing) any sweeping critiques of economics as a discipline” mean you have gone back and deleted the posts where you did exactly that?
Frank - February 3, 2009 at 10:46 am
Dave, sometimes if something goes way off topic I’ll delete it. MAybe that happened there, maybe it didn’t–I’m afraid I don’t remember the exchange.
Dave - February 3, 2009 at 1:01 pm
My apologies… my late night surfing skills are apparently deficient. I found the post this morning:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/12/ibg_foundation.html
A.J. Sutter - February 3, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Apropos of this subject (though not at all of Frank and most other permabloggers here): One of the frustrating things for a commenter is when, despite a long string of comments, or comments directing reasonable questions to the author of the post, the original author never replies to any comments in the thread. (Not replying to mine, but replying to someone else’s, is OK; but I mean not replying to anyone’s.) And sometimes, to add insult to injury, the author puts up a new post the next day, so it’s clear that he or she isn’t too busy with work, travel, conferences, etc. to keep up with the blog.
This attitude reminds me of the short clips of Jerry Seinfeld’s (or his character’s) comedy routine that used to show at the end of his TV show during his early seasons. His style of comedy was “Hey, have you heard about this new thing, X? What’s up with that?! And then there’s this thing Y,….” It would be nice if there were a FAQ for guest bloggers (and, to be fair, permabloggers) suggesting to them that what makes this blog one worth reading is that it’s a dialogue with the audience, not stand-up.
Frank - February 3, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I think that is a good norm, A.J., but hard to enforce. I’ve tried to put the dialogue in the best light possible, but some people find it taxing.
I think the quality of a lot of blogging here might derive from the fact that many people due treat the post almost as a “proposed rule” at the outset of notice-and-comment rulemaking–and feel obliged to respond to meritorious comments. But there are situations when you’re just too busy to do it. And even U.S. agencies sometimes fail to do an adequate job of responding to comments, or making them easy to find. At least here, by and large, a commenter has the consolation of “getting the last word” if they’re not responded to.
I’m finding in my visit at Balkinization that there are times when you just want to put up something online that’s “clean” and unable to be commented on….though it does feel a little regressive, or anti-Web-2.0. I guess people would ideally have a choice of either approach. But you’re right, working towards a norm of conversation here is a good thing, given that we are at that rare intermediate stage of having a good audience, but not one so large that information overload is pervasive.
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