Tuesday, February 01, 2005
What? People disagree with me?
Well, not me, of course. That would be ridiculous. But Kevin Drum claims to divine great meaning from the following phenomenon - nearly all top-rated "liberal" blogs accept comments, while nearly none of the top rated "conservative" blogs do. (And, according to him, Little Green Footballs doesn't really count.)
I've been a part of a couple of interesting discussions in comment threads on both Drum's and Yglesias' site, since the majority of their readers are more than willing to answer questions and clarify points civilly. And while allowing public feedback is certainly admirable, I don't know that not making a place for the ear-rattling din of regular 100+ comment threads isolates one from interaction and self-correction. Blogging exposes one to other blogs, and plenty of people will point out your failings on their own blogs. I'm sure that many of the 110,000 Google results for "instapundit" and "full of crap" have nothing to do with Glenn personally being full of crap, but there's plenty of opportunity for oversight without having to host it yourself.
Besides, do the big guys really read those massive comment threads?
I've been a part of a couple of interesting discussions in comment threads on both Drum's and Yglesias' site, since the majority of their readers are more than willing to answer questions and clarify points civilly. And while allowing public feedback is certainly admirable, I don't know that not making a place for the ear-rattling din of regular 100+ comment threads isolates one from interaction and self-correction. Blogging exposes one to other blogs, and plenty of people will point out your failings on their own blogs. I'm sure that many of the 110,000 Google results for "instapundit" and "full of crap" have nothing to do with Glenn personally being full of crap, but there's plenty of opportunity for oversight without having to host it yourself.
Besides, do the big guys really read those massive comment threads?
