Open Mike: Replying to Comments (Blog Notes)

So here's an interesting issue about running a blog and acting as discussion leader, and promoting selected comments to "Featured" status. When I respond to comments inline, it increases the sense of community and responsiveness, and fosters a sense of involvement. But on the other hand, as the writer of the post in the first place, I've had my say, and I should give you yours. So I don't want to "step on" somebody's comment for whatever reason—because I disagree, because he's wrong, because I'm wrong, because my feelings are hurt, because his comment might be misleading, because he's challenging my authority, because one of us is being picayune or playing devil's advocate, because he reminded me of my version of his story, or because he's a contrarian and it pleases him to disagree with whatever I said just because I said it. Most of the time it's simply best to give others their turn.

I try to hold myself to the same standard I request of you. I don't allow commenters to be insulting, and I don't allow people to respond to other commenters unless they're being friendly, or helpful, or both. I should hold myself to the same standard, right? No anger, no hitting back, no rudeness or put-downs. I try not to respond if it doesn't add anything positive or productive. Many times I will type a reply to someone's comment, read it over, and delete it, thinking, "you're just arguing," or "his opinion is as valid as yours...."

Old days
The idea of the Featured Comments comes from the old days when TOP was getting 20,000–30,000 pageviews a day and an average post could easily get 50 or 100 comments. I checked back to 10 years ago and alighted on a string of posts with 58, 38, 49, 82, 22, and 69 comments...that was the norm then. The "Featured Comments" is intended to be like a Letters to the Editor section—an edited representative sample of comments for people who don't have time to read all of them. Now, of course, you probably could just read all of them—the posts this past week, working backwards, got 15, 21, 5, 7, 7, 24, 17, and 19 comments. But I'm already in the habit, so yeah, here we go.

The key word is "representative"—it's not a selection of the best comments, necessarily. It's a sampling. I don't just pick comments that agree with my opinion. I try to air dissenting viewpoints, promote comments that oppose each other, and give weight to real-world experience. I worked with a guy many years ago who was very impressed with his own knowledge of photography, which exceeded that of most of the audience. But that made him belittle the audience and talk down to them. I learned a lesson from that; my conception ever since then has been that I might know more about my field than much of my audience does, but they know a lot more about their fields than I do. It keeps me from getting snotty. One of the coolest things about the blog to me is that so many readers have actual life experience or direct knowledge that relates to the topic under discussion. The example I like best is that we did a post about Irving Penn's oversized platinum prints once, and we got a comment from Penn's former darkroom assistant who actually made the prints. That's a standout case, but similar things happen all the time.

I'm not a perfect moderator. I try to be as fair as I can, and to value other peoples' input. I'm always trying to improve. For instance, I used to have a bias against people who write poorly. What cured me of that was when I realized that English isn't everybody's first language! And as the old saw goes, they write English a lot better than I can write their language. I can only speak English, despite years of French torture class in school.

The comments are a lot of work, but they're also the best part of the job for me. In the run-up to my pacemaker operation seven weeks ago, I heard from many people and learned a great deal. As he was explaining the process to me, the surgeon (a photography enthusiast too) was so surprised at how much I already knew that he asked if I have a medical background! Nope. Just a lot of readers who do.

Online discussion is inherently fraught, but, all in all, we do remarkably well. Keep those comments coming, and I'll try not to step on them. And, thanks.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Kye Wood: "Perhaps comments have decreased as more people began reading your blog using their phone? Typing this on mine just now is quite arduous. But reading the post was easy."

Mike replies: Oh yes, that's quite possible. I keep forgetting about that.

Paul: "I spend very little time online. This is the only blog I read with any regularity. I am partial to the photographic pieces. The well-moderated comments often enrich the article with an expansive and diverse set of opinions and views."

Dave B: "I always wonder when reading the featured comments…what nugget(s) am I missing from the ‘other’ comments?"

Bob Johnston [no relation —Ed.]: "You really do moderate extremely well. I only comment when I think that what I have to say will add something of value or sometimes because I disagree with what has been said. So I don't comment very often. I think that is what most of your commenters do."

Bear.: "This is the only public site I’ve ever posted on. That’s due to the quality of your moderation and of the posts. I do agree that posting from a phone is a pain. I’m pretty sure the same difficulty is also the behind rise of the like/dislike button and the emoji."

Aakin: "Your posts are over of the few things I comment on online, even though I read a ridiculous amount of blogs and sites. I think a large part of that is that I know you read every post, and actually look for things that are useful, and it makes me want to be a part of that."

Comments

[MikeR]

In my personal experience, a Featured Comment is something that will make me more likely to dive into the others.

[Dave Millier]

Why have the comments tailed off over the years? Your posts haven't got less interesting. Perhaps your audience was very old and no longer with us? Do your web stats provide any clues?

[MarkB]

Just here to comment and bring the average up a bit.. cheers!

[Kirk]

On my own blog when I write about very recent gear introductions or do a long camera review my comments go up a lot. If I write about swimming or eating pecan pie, or swimming or running or swimming, the comments fall off a cliff.

Blogs about swimming are also very good at cutting down on page views. Especially if I mark the columns "OT" and have swimming in the headline.

Want a ton of comments? Try Apple versus PC, or Sony versus Canon. But don't blame me if you have to wade through revived flame wars...

(Darn ellipses...).

[Robert Roaldi]

I think you've been doing a very good job at managing comments. I haven't once felt uncomfortable with what has been written by you or others. Compared to the rest of the interweb, this is a rare oasis of civility.

[David Lee]

What Robert Roaldi said,

[Speed]

"I used to have a bias against people who write poorly. What cured me of that I was I was cured when I realized that English isn't everybody's first language!"

:)

[Ian Goss]

Ellipses are not three dots in a row, folks. It is an entire character entity, most easily entered with macOS or iOS. Other operating systems need to make their own arrangements.

[Lucian P.]

Hello,

There might be a way to validate Kye Wood's hypotesis. Browsers have what's called "User Agent" string and it usually shows up in the webserver log (i.e. your hosting provider log). If you have by any chance access to that, some statistics can be computed from there. Or maybe Typepad already offers you some analytic tools to surface that kind of information...

[Simon]

I am in the habit of visiting TOP roughly weekly via RSS (it shows which and how many posts are unread, which is a great help) and play catch-up on a week's worth of content. As a result I invariably get to see many of the Featured Comments, which provides me with the highlights from readers' contributions. I often don't scroll past that section and really appreciate its existence.

I'm surely one of many here who value both the amount of effort you must expend and the civility with which you handle your moderation. It can't be easy but in my view it makes each article and its comments more valuable. I have very little patience with inane or deliberately inflammatory content and will soon lose interest and stop visiting if the arguments and negativity begin to outweigh the useful information. That simply doesn't happen on TOP and I'm relieved that's the case.