First off, I came on rather stronger than I intended, - and The Pagan Bodhisattva picked up on this - so it doesn't seem that my "histrionics with a wink and a smile" came across correctly in the previous post. So, yes, partly I was definitely kidding. The last link pointing to the meta-confusing-nature of cross-cross-cross posts, was supposed to be the tip-off, but I may have been too obscure for my own good. (Imagine that!)
Secondly, Graham English - one of THE blogs to go to for learning more about NLP - pointed out that Steve Pavlina at least, had explained why he had turned off comments.
Steve Pavlina's REASONS, are actually interesting. His reasons are:
a. Time investment in managing comments
For me, this makes a lot of sense - it DOES take quite a lot of time to manage and interact with comments - and it is totally valid that there are opportunity cost for doing so - and since much of the world does NOT happen when blogging - to paraphrase John Lennon - "life is what happens to you when you are busy blogging" - well, who can argue?
b. But the other reason is really interesting, and highlights an important issue, so I will exaggerate the reason here, for effect. What I would boil it down to is that Pavlina is saying that basically, people are idiots. Which is funny, because my exact comment was " ignore the hoi polloi common man who deigns to comment on my blog."
Now, why do I say that about Pavlina? here's his reasons listed -
" -Partly this is because I want to maintain certain standards of quality"
"- Does it [criticism] do myself or anyone else any good?"
"-A good portion of criticism is simply the other person projecting"
"-there’s invariably an explosion of juvenile comments"
"-As this is intended to be a site “for smart people” who take personal development seriously, I think having too many comments like those weakens the site overall"
Let me know what you think, but - when I look at this - you can clearly see - as subtext - a certain bit of superiority running through this?
The thing is though - he's RIGHT. We all know that opening comments can lead to trolls, can lead to stupid blogfights, can lead to various other things that are negative. The signal-to-noise ratio is HIGH in the blogworld.
For me, because I have this idealized conception of a peer-to-peer structure - and blogs with comments, and then community blog sites, fall into this realm - I think it's worth it.
I still find it fascinating however, that the main spiritual and self-improvement sites, don't allow this type of peer-to-peer functionality, and most likely for the same reasons that Pavlina does not.
Related - score a win for non peer-to-peer spiritual sites, and What Is Enlightenment won the Webby in the Religion and Spirituality category. Good design and good content will beat naive amorphous peer to peer every time - even if the founder is a doofus. (I blame C4Chaos endorsement - never under the power of C4!)
In other news - Matthew Dallman has initiated comments, and I'm glad for it. He is debating the same type of issues.
At any rate - comments. Sound and fury signifying nothing? Are the personal growth "heavies" justifiably superior, in a "read the f**king manual, and listening to what I'm saying" way?
Lastly, who are the spiritual/personal growth leaders out there, who enthusiastically embrace peer-to-peer in their online sites, despite the sound and fury, where maybe 60% of the noise signals not too much?
