flip flopping like a politician. I just posted about an idea I had for visualizing discussion data, and realized that having comments disabled would be harmful. discussion would likely still occur, via twitter or email or whatever, but the thinking-out-loud collaboration would be lost.
so… flip-flop, the 5th? 6th? comments are now enabled for posts, but they close automatically after 14 days. that gives lots of time for shared thinking-out-loud, while still providing mitigation against trolls and spammers and those who use blog comments as places to vent their spleens.
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times by email, I think comments are important, particularly if your blog is going to be a place of conversation. I know that I’ve decided not to go to the bother of emailing a couple of comments I’ve had on blog posts with comments disabled (not just here). So, thank-you for opening the conversation up again!
One doesn’t particularly have to justify each and every one of their choices, they are theirs and if someone wanted to be critical of them it wouldn’t be hard to do.
But some people, like myself, have more respect than that.
If someone wants to vent their spleens they can do so in 14 days — if that’s what they want to do. And they could become a continuous irritant, if that’s what they wanted to do. And we’re all learning through our experience and experiments who to be and not to be. I think we should always be open to that. And perhaps your actions can help educate other people on who and how to be or how not to be — we can all learn from that.
As for trolling, I think that says more about us and our abilities to not become enraged, but again some of us aren’t good at containing our opinions, but hopefully we learn with time and learn how to express our opinions more constructively rather than as a criticism that enrages? Well, I hope so, anyway.
Take care.