Blog Comments (ramblings)

One of the best indicators of audience engagement when running a blog is the comment count. Visitors to a blog can click on an article heading that interests them, read and learn something from it. Or they can decide it’s too boring and move on. However, when somebody posts a comment, it’s because they have read something that they have formed a strong opinion about. And when that comment gets a reply, you have a series of discussions built around the content of the blog. The comments themselves are a part of the blog content.

At times, blog owners disable comments on content that may be viewed as controversial - it reduces the effort in moderating comments and filtering spam (does anyone remember the free comment spam filtering feature of WordPress?) on a very active blog. Or blog owners may disable comments entirely - such as when you want to prevent users from using the commenting feature to post complaints that should be addressed by a helpdesk.

However, when you disable comments, do you still have the essence of what makes it a blog? Doesn’t disabling comments make it a Wiki, an engineering notebook, or just a content-drip? Blogs were a significant part of the Web 2.0 - when content was generated by audiences as well as site authors (before microblogs and photo-blogging sites grew in prominence).