So, a while ago, there was a discussion about comments on blogs in the community and I didn’t get to write my post on the matter because…
- the discussion died down by the time I got writing and I didn’t feel like stirring more up,
- I wasn’t sure if I could add anything that hasn’t been said already,
- and I didn’t have the time at the time to read all the follow-ups that were being written by all sorts of people, on top of all the discussions that were being had in the discord channels.
Hence, I’m now writing a post just to add my two cents in here (and to also get another post out. I’m kind of missing 13 and just published two more posts. I wanna reach 31 this year for Blaugust, and I have to do it somehow). I don’t wanna stir up anything again. Apologies if it does.
So, comments, eh?
Naithin observed some things a while ago whilst reading through the whole slew of new blog posts that come flooding into our content-sharing channels in the Blaugust discord whenever Blaugust happens: A lot of folks don’t have comments enabled on their blog. More precisely, static blogs don’t have that feature.
In his post over here, Naithin calls this phenomenon “minimalism” which, to me, makes it sound very “intentional” as if folks deliberately put out a blog without comments for the sake of some artistic value when in reality a lot of the (especially newer) bloggers participating this year might just not use comments in the same way we do.
As it stands, if you have a Discord that your core audience interacts with, you don’t need a comment section. Some people even link to their socials, like BlueSky, the Fediverse, Twitter, or even their e-mail inbox so that people can reach out over there. Other people have guest books. Damn. And then there’s some bubbles where it’s more common to just write a blog post in response to another blog post rather than writing a comment. All of that is fine, I think.
Either way, something that bothered me with Naithin’s original post was just that the tone makes it seem as if it’s super intentional when some people may just blog differently from us. Particularly on blogging sites like bearblog, you’ve got static sites that load super quickly, look neat, and are just built different. Over there, people will write a response (typically labelled “re: [original post title]” and then respond to a blog post on their own blog whilst linking back to the original post.
As an example, here’s an article I found literally just now that works in that manner. The author of “An Almost Anonymous Blog” responds to someone’s post that was featured on “People & Blogs” this week by linking to said post and then writing their response. Also the author’s post here on “Publish once, syndicate nowhere” is a very interesting piece to read, so I’d highly recommend checking it out. Again, I found it interesting to read.
Either way, back to the original point of the post, some people “comment” but they do it differently. Some people may also just not know that you cannot have comments when they create their static site. Other people are still browsing platforms. When I created this blog, I was surprised when I saw that someone commented on one of my posts. It was very much a “oh, damn, what happened!” thing for me, haha
So, for some people it might be an active choice, for some people it might be an accident. For other people, however, it becomes a very costly affair to set up comments on their site, and that’s not something everyone fucks with. And that’s fine.
There’s plenty of reasons. There might even be folks that don’t want to give others a way to insult them, perhaps, although I haven’t really seen others echo that kind of sentiment. When that did come up as a “perhaps it’s this” kind of thought, someone said that people are too fragile which prompted my other post.
Anyway, originally, that was just what I thought about Naithin’s post.
The original post, in my opinion, sounds a bit harsh at times… but it is still features a very valid point of view.
Naithin describes how human interaction, to him, forms a big part of blogging and how sacrificing that by creating a static site makes blogging less personal and very much less human… It’s a concern he has about the shifts and changes within the medium he loves so much.
That post then sparked multiple other posts by him and other people, plus discussions on the Blaugust Discord, so I won’t get into all of those because it’s a bit hard to mention everyone and not forget someone, if that makes sense.
Something I wanted talk about as well though was that sometimes words create certain impressions when they come from certain people.
For a while, there was a lot of discussion on whether or not Blaugust Participation would require comments. This came to be because someone on one of the posts who happens to be a “Mentor” on the Blaugust Discord server said something along those lines, very carefully, as a thing that might be worth pondering about.
That in itself doesn’t mean anything, though, and I think that a lesson learned here is that certain positions and statements will be misunderstood by people if certain people say them.
Mentors are blogging veterans who help behind the scenes with Blaugust’s organisation and moderation. We get to kick the spam bots, for one, assign roles, handle the post counting, create graphics for the event, and do a lot of other stuff. It’s cool stuff. Typically, Belghast does everything but I’m really happy that he delegated that to others this year.
Anyway, the fact that a mentor uttered a statement like that about a rule change, even as carefully as they did, was seen as a definite thing that will happen, when that’s not the case.
It’s similar to how someone wearing a uniform will be taken more seriously at a ralley than someone who isn’t. Aesthetics, eh?
It’s a bad look. We did clarify, on multiple occasions, that something like that would only be discussed after the event is over and that there are plenty of people who’d oppose a rule change like that. Either way, as it stands, that added to a lot of the confusion and sucked. Personally, I don’t think comments are that much of a necessary feature given how so many people use the Blaugust Discord server or socials for communication, but hey that’s just me.
In a similar vein, I really gotta dial down the posts on political discussions during Blaugust since me, as a mentor, writing about these matters in my very left-leaning fashion might send the signal that that’s the only opinion and position that is allowed when – again – that’s not the case. I’m just me. And other’s are just others. But the uniform, the badge, the role, et cetera… it makes a difference.
Obviously, I don’t *have to* dial that down… but I’d imagine that being clearer in my communication would be beneficial. As in, “my opinions here don’t reflect the whole team’s stance” or something like that when I share said post on the Discord.
Anyhow, I’ll do better in the future. Nothing came up really in my case, though, so I might just be overthinking it… but seeing how folks panicked because of the one comment made by someone about comments and Blaugust participation got me thinking about my own conduct and how things could be misunderstood… but then again, I also only practically wrote one post on anti-fascism and I doubt that anyone in our community would be for fascism, lol.
So, yeah, I’m rambling at this point. Again, I hope this doesn’t stir anything up. It shouldn’t. All of what I said should be as tame and carefully formulated as I could and uh, yeah :< I tried.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.
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