OK, maybe not a full-on frenzy, but I was somewhat startled to be invited on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Current to discuss the closure of blog comments. Someone really wants to do radio about … blog comments!? Well, I guess it’s not that surprising. Our lives are increasingly online and who doesn’t have an opinion about blog comments and trolls and the like?
Anyway, the segment was Monday, and I had intended to post about it, but forgot. (It’s been that kind of week.) But, my colleague Keith Humphreys wrote such an excellent post on it himself, I see no reason why I should say more.
Austin Frakt of The Incidental Economist group blog recently discussed TIE’s decision to close off comments with Anna Maria Tremonti of CBC Radio One (full program here). One of the good points made in the discussion is that the costs and benefits of comment sections vary by blog. If you are running a big news website in the world’s most polite country and have staff hired to moderate your blog, even thousands of comments are manageable and valuable. In contrast, if you are operating an academically-oriented blog that has no paid staff like TIE, the comment section may feel like more work than its aggregate value justifies.
Keith also shut off comments on his posts and, like us, is happier for it. The rest of his post is here.
