No Comments, No-reply: Is There A Shift Happening? | Hacker News Reader

No Comments, No-reply: Is There A Shift Happening?

andersonjr.com

7 pointswiljr10 comments

It's a question of where you want the conversation to happen and whether you want to encourage this conversation in the first place. There are plenty of (successful) sites that act merely as a megaphone for whatever the author has to say, while he doesn't care about what random readers think. Meanwhile, lots of blog authors pray for some kind of feedback, some kind of legitimate comment that never comes.

Providing a comments section or forum builds a community around information sources that are already valuable and/or have a high reputation. It seems a little short-sighted to miss this opportunity to build a relationship with your users that goes beyond satisfying their immediate needs. People have no loyalty to their information sources, they'll switch when something better comes along - but they do hesitate to leave a community, even a stagnant one.

Good points.

I think the conversations should be happening regardless of the site. If I receive a comment on H/N, I want to reply in the easiest way possible FOR ME so we can carry on the conversation. Right now, I have H/N hooked into Engag.io, so I can follow all discussions in one place. That's easy.

Too many places to moderate comments is too difficult. This difficulty only increases as your stories are published more broadly.

From a site / comment manager perspective, is it quality or quantity that drives the decision to keep comments open / closed?

I look at it like an actor - when you are starting out, you'll take all the publicity you can get. When you're on top, you've accomplished being noticed, now you want "better" publicity.

Or, something like that.

I think there are some places where comments work great and some places where they descend into vitriol and nonsense. I totally respect decisions that go either way. It really depends on the subject matter, your own tone (which definitely sets the tone for the comments) and the amount of energy you're willing or able to put into policing and moderating the discussion.

Personally I'd be happy to never see another comment section on a local newspaper site ever again. They're the absolute worst.

Are they the worst because they don't manage the comments?

Yeah, go ahead and shut down the comments, we will continue to comment here though :)

Ha ha, good point! Though, I have no intentions of shutting down comments. :)

Yeah, I was wondering about "meta-sites", psychologically linked to places that don't have comments/discussions.

Maybe disassociating the comments and discussion from the original stimulus is a good idea?

Or maybe they are unable to index comments? I would think content (of any type) is key for these sites.

I don't think it's a good idea. I mean, the writer isn't working in a vacuum - their posted stories shouldn't either.

Comments and Moderation are a major pain point for people running community sites. In order to manage trolls (and spam bots), you had registrations on, and that really cut down on both the good and the bad ones participating. Still not nearly an effective solution.

I think this is a side effect of Facebook comments. I have noticed that whenever there is a "validated" commenting system, where the user cant just create a fake id and rant away, but is connected to his/her social profile somehow, the trolling rate drops significantly. And on the positive side, because there is a linkback to your entire social community about your viewpoint, it also extends the reach of your content among active users. Its a win-win from the content creators point of view.

Just makes sense.

I agree with the validation / ownership piece. Would be nice if it was site-agnostic though (ie, Disqus rather than Facebook).

(I'm not a big fan of Facebook.)

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