smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Or how I stopped being concerned about comments and learned to love the content.

There has been a bit of blogger activity of late, primarily surrounding John Gruber’s decision a while back to roll comment free and whether it’s actually a darn good move.

Obviously the first pay-off is an immediate cessation of needing to care about comment spam, comment policies and drive-by-morons, with nothing better to do than spout endless drivel that has no relevancy, at all, period, to the topic at hand.

The second allows the author to really focus on delivering top-notch content, with a focus on detail and a certain criticality or edge, to a readership who will (often) have quite similar views and tastes - without having to word material in a way that is perhaps a little more restrained, given the readership can respond.

Daring Fireball ((.. link: http://daringfireball.net )) and Airbag Industries ((.. link: http://www.airbagindustries.com)) are, as an example, written by keenly aware, articulate and savvy bloggers — who are extremely proficient at their craft. With many hundreds of readers, open comments have the very real potential to attract a huge number of voices and could, very much, cause the original point to fall silent, as it is drowned out by a cacophony of correspondents.

And if the preference is to have one way dialogue (such as John’s reasons, in part, have been) presenting material to one’s peers and interested parties, then comments are, to a point, irrelevant — topics can and often will be debated across the wider blogger environs in return.

However, there is a risk inherent in doing so. One can be a complete ass hat, smeg-head or indeed wanker, about a topic, or person, without the yardstick that comments can be. Like anonymity, a lack of comment provides a more tempting environment to come out swinging with scant regard for it’s resultant effects.

Indeed, whilst I rate Gruber’s take on Apple activities with quite some authority, he is¹ not above handing someone their ass, as much based on his own opinion on occasion, than as fact (or rather, reality) would suggest. Is that offensive? Hell no - folks often deserve the comeuppance dished out.. but it is all too easy to fall back on attack, rather than present a reasoned argument in return.

In my case, I still enjoy the feedback received, perhaps I am not yet quite the cynic I perhaps thought I was and it is obvious to any who read, that I am barely literate on occasion, let alone astute. However, content is very much a stronger force than comment at this time. Thus, all future remainder links² have had commenting disabled. There is no real need, as they are in effect, just a links list — responses are welcome via linked entries elsewhere.

Moving forward, comments for full entries may be handled a little differently, with the form and any comment initially hidden behind an easily accessed link to keep clutter to a minimum. This promises to provide an environment where the content stands (or falls) on it’s own merit, with the added facility of comments for those who may have them.

The focus has very much become delivering content, ultimately, worth reading..

1. .. no offence John, this is but observation only (↩)
2. .. the short links interspersed between entries (↩)