What I find about commenters on my blog is that they tend to come in two varieties: those who really enjoy the content and the discussion it engenders, and those who have been snarked and go ballistic, leaving me nastygrams. Either way, I get a lot of comments, and they’re generally more interesting (and funnier) than the entries themselves. A few lurkers will read voraciously, follow my links to source material, then report the “news” on a forum board as if they had discovered the original source for themselves (”Look at ME, folks! Look what I found!11ELEVENTY1!”), which I find amusing.

thats some practical insight from experience.

So, I am here to tell you that I have read your material and you are not alone.

Blog-comments are not structured or organized, except chronologically. They are like the P.S. or Post Script in a traditional letter, inserted by readers. A few of them can add to the body of the post, but to have many is tiresome, even if they are relevant … because there is no ‘composition’ to them, like there is to the body of a thoughtful post.

Most folks’ blog shares their life with many other roles & demands, so 1.) their own blog is not being tended all the time and 2.) they are not interacting with other blogs on a closely-regular basis, because other parts of their life have them away from the blog-scene.

It seems pretty conspicuous, that many of the better-known blogs are blogging about blogging, and about particular blog-ware, especially. This blog is a good example.

That suggests to me, that really many bloggers are like me: they want to use blog-ware skillfully, but not necessarily as a blogger: their interest in blogging is mainly a matter of gaining knowledge & skills to pursue their basic interests … which aren’t blogging per se.

There are some people who are close to the computer most of the time, and these folks at least have the option to engage in blogging in the true sense. Many of us, though, are either away from the computer a good portion of the time, or must keep our focus on something else even if the computer is handy, to be blogging in a serious way.

I think blog-ware, especially WordPress, is changing so that it will be better-able to support those of us who really aren’t bloggers, either aren’t all that interested, or are too involved in other things that prevent paying proper attention to be much of a blogger.

The changes are making blogging more CMS-ish. Comments should become more like content, and less an activity that is the end in itself. Comments should tend to have enduring value, rather than disappear into an Archive, in many cases never to be seen again (this is tied to the nature of the Post, too, of course).

Better structure will help. For example, comments could be tagged. We could have several classes of tags for comments: the contributor can attach tags to her own comment; the Post author can go through comments and apply tagging based on what the motives & aims of the Post were, to him, from the start. Thirdly, visitors could be enabled to tag comments. We have some of this already.

This and other tactics could also offer value-added track for comments, whereby they acquire more value, and new relationships with other comments.

If posts are to attract comments over extend time (which is a way of increasing their value), then it may be that the Post should also grow & change with time. Be update, edited, and so on. Ultimately, this could lead to Wikipedia-style mechanisms. I have dismissed that level of detail and tracking … but maybe I am wrong on that.

The plugin Blicki was intended to endow WordPress with such capability (Wikipedia tracking & rollback, etc.). These features could make comments a far more robust facility, and open the commenting-phenomena to many who currently can’t really play.

I too, tend to post on smaller blogs, because I know how it’s like to have a new blog (or a blog under a different name), and not get any comments.

Usually, I only write a comment if what I have to say is short, if the post inspires me to write something longer, then I write a post on my own site with a pingback.

I don’t want to put a 5000 word essay in someone’s comment stream. Won’t get read anyway

I tend to comment on blogs that have topics I find engaging and worthwhile. I also comment on my friends blogs when they send out a general notice of something “noteworthy” on their sites. Every so often I comment on non-friend blogs, and when I do it’s usually to add a useful perspective or insight into something (political debate, review, or a how-to), add a funny quip of my own, or to break some rude commenters balls out of principle.

But what motivates me to drop comments at all is a sense of interactivity and open community. When a blog puts to many obstacles/restrictions upfront to participate then I don’t even bother coming back to the blog again in most cases.

I have regular readers everyday, but they hardly comment. Its sad.

I do as you say…

When in doubt, I’m not above removing the link but leaving the comment.