Abhiroop Basu

Bile

Commenting on blogs is an essential part of online interaction, something separates it from mainstream journalism. Instead of merely consuming content we can actively engage with the author, providing ideas, increasing clarity, and of course improving grammar. There is no absolute requirement for commenting, but there is a reason some of the most popular blogs on the internet (TechCrunch, Wired, Ars, etc.) all allow comments.

parislemon:

@parislemon you are missing out on a rich experience by dissing comments, commenters, and the dialog that results. parislemon.com/post/152882106…
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) January 4, 2012

Last night I came home after watching Michigan’s most excellent Sugar Bowl win and read Matt Gemmell’s follow-up on why he turned commenting off on his blog a month ago. “It was definitely the right move,” he writes. And I agree with all of his points, so I linked to his post from here and followed up with a few brief words of my own on the topic.

This made some people mad.

Above, Fred Wilson says I’m missing out by “dissing” comments, commenters, etc. Not stated in that tweet is that Wilson is an investor in Disqus, a leading blog commenting system (though they view themselves as more — more on that in a bit). I don’t fault Wilson for not mentioning this very vested interest because a) 140 characters is 140 characters b) I know that he really believes in Internet comments or he wouldn’t have made the Disqus investment in the first place. Still, context is important.

Wilson’s blog, A VC, is a testament to the best of Internet commenting. It shows that on a case-by-case basis with some work, commenting can be productive and perhaps even useful. But I still disagree with Wilson that I’m missing out on anything by not allowing comments here. Because, as I wrote last night, the vast majority of the time, comments are bile. Or nonsense. Or useless. Or some combination of the three.

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