Sunday, October 02, 2005
Why not comments on this blog? And more.
A number of people have asked why I don't allow comments on this blog.
I began this blog a year ago to talk about my book and to only do that. Most authors these days have to blog their books because publishers do little, if any publicity, on mid-list books. I made a conscious decision at that time to keep it narrowly focused on the book to avoid any conflict of interest with my day job at CBC. I plan to return to that once this is over.
At that time I had been following blogs for quite a while. I modeled it in a small way on Andrew Sullivan's high successful Daily Dish, which is number nine on the Technorati top one hundred. Sullivan does not allow comments, he does publish e-mail. I have always published legitimate e-mail comments as soon as possible after I have received them. E-mail allows time for someone to make a thoughtful response to a blog post.
Seth Godin also does not allow comments on his blog. Godin is considered one of the top gurus of blogging.
He says in his e-book on blogging
The Blogger.com system that I and most people in this lockout use doesn't, at the moment, allow trackbacks.
So I have linked to other sites where the comments are relevant and legitimate.
Also maintaining and vetting comments and removing flame comments takes a lot of time. So does stopping attacks of topic spam which have disrupted many lockout sites. Those people who simply post comments and don't run blogs don't have to deal with comment spam.
My blogging has taken more time from my book than I wanted to do.
I could have done all this anonymously as others have (although by now most people know who the various anonymous ones are). I decided to keep my name on this.
I have not posted e-mails which I was easily able to prove were phony by tracking them back to the transmission source.
Have I gone "off the rails" as Ouimet once said? Not sure about that. I may have gone a little over the top now and again, (but that is blogosphere isn't it?) I have made every effort to keep this blog as credible as possible. I decided to post "chatter" and identify it as "chatter" because I felt there was always some underlying truth to what I posted.
The aim of all posts, both the reports on what was happening and on the new media technology and what other organizations are doing was to make things a little better after we get back in. So I stand by that.
8:50 PM posted by Robin Rowland
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I began this blog a year ago to talk about my book and to only do that. Most authors these days have to blog their books because publishers do little, if any publicity, on mid-list books. I made a conscious decision at that time to keep it narrowly focused on the book to avoid any conflict of interest with my day job at CBC. I plan to return to that once this is over.
At that time I had been following blogs for quite a while. I modeled it in a small way on Andrew Sullivan's high successful Daily Dish, which is number nine on the Technorati top one hundred. Sullivan does not allow comments, he does publish e-mail. I have always published legitimate e-mail comments as soon as possible after I have received them. E-mail allows time for someone to make a thoughtful response to a blog post.
Seth Godin also does not allow comments on his blog. Godin is considered one of the top gurus of blogging.
He says in his e-book on blogging
if you want to say something about one of my ideas go ahead and track back and put it on your blog. Your non-anonymous blog. Your comment where your comment is context with all your other comments.
The Blogger.com system that I and most people in this lockout use doesn't, at the moment, allow trackbacks.
So I have linked to other sites where the comments are relevant and legitimate.
Also maintaining and vetting comments and removing flame comments takes a lot of time. So does stopping attacks of topic spam which have disrupted many lockout sites. Those people who simply post comments and don't run blogs don't have to deal with comment spam.
My blogging has taken more time from my book than I wanted to do.
I could have done all this anonymously as others have (although by now most people know who the various anonymous ones are). I decided to keep my name on this.
I have not posted e-mails which I was easily able to prove were phony by tracking them back to the transmission source.
Have I gone "off the rails" as Ouimet once said? Not sure about that. I may have gone a little over the top now and again, (but that is blogosphere isn't it?) I have made every effort to keep this blog as credible as possible. I decided to post "chatter" and identify it as "chatter" because I felt there was always some underlying truth to what I posted.
The aim of all posts, both the reports on what was happening and on the new media technology and what other organizations are doing was to make things a little better after we get back in. So I stand by that.
8:50 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
