The chatroom makes a comeback: a solution to the comments headache?

 – posted February 16th, 2007 by Laurence Veale     Comments (2)

Apart from all the writing you need to do on a blog, there is a huge amount of additional overhead involved, one of which is managing and moderating comments. You may need to respond to some comments, whereas others are just spam offering instant enlargement or other gratifications of the flesh. Similar to spam by email, if you publish a blog, you may have to spend considerable time moderating comments let alone the time required to respond to the ones that are bona fide. Along with death and taxes, you may have to be stoic enough to accept comment spam is part of the price you pay for having a blog and every now and then whisper the serenity prayer to yourself. Some people don’t bother with comments, it’s too much work. So how do you cope?

Logins, CAPTCHAs, blacklists, Askimet: are they the answer?

There are various ways to block comment spam, from:

  • requiring users to register (as if they needed another account on the web)
  • providing clever CAPTCHAs, which can be inaccessible
  • adding IP addresses or certain keywords to a blacklist
  • integrating with a central comment checker like Askimet
  • turning off comments, a little extreme and not very UGC-centric.

Monsieur Corbett, over at Eirepreneur, predicts that 2007 will be the year when comments die, to be replaced by trackbacks.

Trackbacks mean that you can add a comment or get involved in the conversation on a blog by posting to your own blog and by linking to the original blog post, your contribution will be picked up automatically. A great idea, and potentially gives the conversation a much wider audience. However, it’s not without it’s own problems.

The problems with trackbacks are…

  • They require the commenter to have their own blog
  • The benefit of a more distributed converation i.e. wider audience can also be a problem: it can be too distributed and can lose context

Back to the basics: the purpose of comments

When setting up a blog and, presumably, comments, we need to ask why are we doing it. We’re probably no different to most other people with blogs: the purpose of blogs and comments is to start conversations, to get people to engage with us (even if it is to tell us we’re completely wrong). It’s worth repeating, it’s about conversations.

Return of the chatroom?

I could be wrong, but chatrooms aren’t as prevalent as they were in the late 90’s, largely being replaced by forums, instant messaging and of course, blogs. In fact, I thought they were by and large dead. Until now.

Don’t leave a comment, join the chat

What initially prompted me to write this post, was reading about Garrett Dimon’s new design. Instead of the comments or trackbacks, he had a link to his own chatroom on campfire (from web application darlings, 37 signals) where I joined in the discussion.

It was definitely a more personal or human experience than leaving a comment. And that’s the real benefit: commenting, chatting, debating with the author and others in the room in real time. It’s far more human than just leaving a comment. It requires a little more commitment, but that’s the real beauty, you get people who are committing and adding to the discussion, rather than those just looking for link bait. The downside? The author can’t be chatting 24 hours!

Still, though, good food for thought. What do you think? Take a bite, join the discussion by leaving a comment, ironically.

Categories Technology

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