I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of late, about commenting on blogs. A mixture of a niggling discontent of the evolution of blogging and of attitudes to commenting have led me to decide to trial turning off comments on my blog for a week and instead asking people to tweet me any thoughts they have on posts I write. Just a little trial, I’m genuinely interested in how it will go as I’ve always placed huge value in comments as a dialogue between reader and writer.
Mummy Barrow got me to thinking after she wrote this post on Blog Comments, which was written as a response to CopyBlogger’s post Why We’re Removing Comments on Copyblogger – both great posts and both provoked some really fascinating discussion.
Initially my thoughts were ‘Are you actually insane?! Removing comments?!‘ I do feel comments can be hugely beneficial for a post, especially where the discussion follows on or advice is left that can benefit future readers. But… queue my inner-discontent… I have been privy to conversations about how people prefer commenting on blogs with commentluv enabled because it gives them a link back when they comment. Heck I even have commentluv plugin installed and turned on. But it’s kind of sad that commenting and community has evolved to that point where that’s something that people might consider as a pre-requisite for choosing to leave a comment on a blog. Hands up I’ve always held blog commenting as one of the most important parts of blogging, of community, of getting to know people, to share thoughts. But, well maybe no longer, I mean there are other places to talk to people – Twitter for example.
I went away, thought on and referred back to a post on Slow Blogging by Jodi, where I left this rather waffling comment, which sums up how I feel at the moment:
“It’s an odd barrel of fish, blogging I mean. It goes in circles. I was introduced to the concept of slow blogging a year ago and totally ‘got it’ at the time but now it seems like more of a reaction to the blogging evolution, sorry I know that sounds odd.
With so many new blogs staring every day and not all for the joy of documenting life and the love of expressing oneself it does feel like something is happening at the moment, but something more than slow blogging, a rise of the purists (and I really don’t mean that to sound half as pompous as it might do!). In an age where I hear weekly of the latest place I ‘should’ share posts and advice galore I do feel there’s room for a return to basics, to the love and passion of caring about what we write, valuing our space and dare I say, keeping it real”
It’s really made me step back and think long and hard about how I feel about blogging right now. I’ve asked myself what makes a successful blog? Is it page views? Is it comments? Is it followers? Is it that the person writing it is fulfilled and happy writing it? It’s worth thinking of a blog that you deem as ‘successful’ and asking yourself why you have come to that decision.
The main things I’m hoping to discover this week are:
Knowing that I love the interaction aspect of blogging – Will comment discussion filter over to Twitter?
Am I going to feel a liberation akin to removing ones bra and running full pelt down the High Street?
Is trying to keep up with discussion on Twitter going to be insane?
Will it effect how I read and comment on other blogs?
Will my discontent be settled?
I’ve honestly no idea as to whether it’s going to be a good or bad thing, but I think it’s worth a try. If it works well for me I’ll carry it on, if it doesn’t I’ll turn them back on. Let the experiment begin!
Oh yes, of course do tweet me if you fancy sharing your thoughts on this – @mammasaurusblog. And do be gentle with me, I have stinking cold 
All content ©Annie Spratt, Mammasaurus 2011- onwards