Comments on: The scourge of conversations http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/ The library voice of the radical middle. Sat, 14 Nov 2015 22:30:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.1 By: Anna http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-147 Tue, 10 May 2005 22:02:02 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-147 “She uses something from RateYourMusic as a comment system; I wonder if it disappears at times.”

I’ve noticed it gone on occasion, and then it reappears. That’s one reason why I prefer to use the commenting system which is integrated into my blog software.

]]>
By: K.G. Schneider http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-134 Mon, 09 May 2005 01:28:44 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-134 p.s. on abandoned blogs: sure, people abandon blogs. No shame in that. People also abandon manuscripts, paintings, etc. Blogs are a public effort so when they’re abandoned they’re just much more noticeable. But magazines fold every week, too. Life happens!

]]>
By: K.G. Schneider http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-133 Mon, 09 May 2005 01:26:38 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-133 I manage my time with Free Range Librarian. It’s definitely a balancing act. That’s one reason I do a lot of pre-posting on the weekend and use the future publication option in Movable Type to flow the content through the week. But there have definitely been times when I see an issue come and go and think it would be nice to weigh in But I Do Not Have The Time Right Now.

Blogging is also a great background activity for junk TV, favorite radio shows, and waiting at the airport–none of this conducive to what I think of as serious deep-sea writing.

I estimate I spent 11 hours today on personal non-blog writing (no lie; yesterday about the same), 45 minutes on blogging (I monitored my time–after 30 minutes I began editing), and 5 minutes during the CBS Evening News writing this comment. 😉

]]>
By: walt http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-132 Sun, 08 May 2005 18:46:45 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-132 Seth (typically) gets to the heart of the matter in the last paragraph of his comment, and Jessamyn suggests it as well. I’m having fun with this blog–but I notice that I’m getting less work done on Cites & Insights because I’m spending time on the blog.

The stuff that appears here doesn’t matter as much to me (or, I think, to anyone else) as the stuff that appears in the journal.

So maybe my nervousness about commenting is also a nervousness about timesinks. I’m aiming for four posts a week and spending no more than 15-20 minutes a day related to w.a.r. So far, I’m falling short of the aim (just as I keep falling short of the 16-page/12x-year aim for C&I). It may seem like “exceeding the target” from some perspectives, but from here it’s falling short of a sustainable balance.

Of course, if I give up the blog or it becomes semi-inactive after a month or two, I’ll be right in the mainstream (for a change).

]]>
By: Marianne http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-131 Sun, 08 May 2005 11:20:25 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-131 I run two blogs, one on WordPress and one at Blogger and it’s been interesting to see the differences in them, especially in search engine referrers: stats from the blogger site show very few search engine hits and the one one WordPress gets quite a few. Of course WordPress gets the nod for user friendly customizations, but hosting sometimes isn’t an option.

Haloscan is a decent third-party commenting tool. I very rarely notice it being down and I’ve been able to customise it fairly well. I haven’t had one single instance of comment spam like I do with WordPress.

And for those of us who probably suffer from an internet addiction: blogging is mainlining!

]]>
By: Seth Finkelstein http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-130 Sun, 08 May 2005 05:38:01 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-130 The RateYourMusic comment system uses a contorted Javascript system, which I believe is not reliable it all. I didn’t pay it much attention, but I think it did in fact disappear at times. They might have changed it or gotten more reliable.

For a more precise count, you could ask Blake to go thorugh the logs. Might be interesting. But beware the referer-spammers.

Note I started Infothought before Bloglines was so popular, so that’s one factor to consider (but so few people read me then, maybe it doesn’t matter …). Though the estimate of a few hundred seems right.

Writing a blog sucks … time. I’ve come pretty close to abandoning mine on occasion (ore or another event intervened), and even now consider it marginal.

]]>
By: jessamyn http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-127 Sun, 08 May 2005 01:36:51 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-127 Though I am a frequent commenter on other people’s blogs, I have had a hard time with it on my own. I had comments turned on for my blog while I was at the DNC and I found that people would post questions for me instead of emailing me. Replying in the comments started conversations which were interesting but took up a lot of time for me. So, I had to decide that I could either have comments, or a frequently-updated blog and a job anda life, and I chose the latter. I get a lot of email and reply to almost all of it that isn’t just link suggestions. Basically I don’t have comments because I wouldn’t feel okay not reading them or replying to them, and yet that would take up the already small amount of time I use for blogging.

William Gibson started a blog and I saw him at a reading once. Someone in the audience asked if he would keep it up. He said something to the effect that focusing on blogging took up time in the vast expanses of space that he needed free for writing, so if he was working on another book, then no.

I reconsider this choice often, and if I get my personal blog up and running using some sort of CMS instead of doing it by hand, I plan to exnable comments. It’s a failing of librarian.net, no question, but not having to keep an eye on comments and comment spam has freed me up to do more posting, reading, writing and living so I’m okay with it for now.

]]>
By: walt http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-126 Sat, 07 May 2005 23:33:40 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-126 Karen’s right–and this is just weird. The last two times I clicked through to Shifted Librarian, once specifically wanting to comment, there was no “comment” link under each post–none that I could see anywhere on the page.

Today, they’re there, and there are obviously comments.

I think this has happened before at blogs with third-party comment systems (like the RateYourMusic thing at Shifted Librarian): the comments just disappear and reappear at times.

Or I’m going crazy, which is also possible.

I certainly agree that comment spam would be a terrible reason not to use WordPress. My spam problem (such as it was) was on a Blogger blog. WordPress has a great range of available add-ons/plug-ins, and the native comment handling is reasonably good.

Steven C’s is another case where comments are spotty–sometimes, I can’t get to them; sometimes, attempting to post a comment results in an error message. Most of the time, it works just fine.

]]>
By: K.G. Schneider http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-125 Sat, 07 May 2005 22:58:27 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-125 Huh? Jenny’s blog allows comments, and I tried in Firefox as well as IE. I don’t know if Jessamyn has ever done so on her blog, so it’s hardly a trend. Steven and Michael allow comments, Lorcan does, IAG does, Eclectic does, Open Stacks does, I do, some other don’t, etc. etc.

But I don’t think you can worry about what an “A-list blogger” (however you define that) might or might not do; it’s a matter of preference–sometimes, preference per post. Scobleizer, for example, is all about the comments, as is JoHo and BuzzMachine. ResourceShelf is newsier, hence no comments.

Based on what I think of as the function of C&I Updates, I don’t think comments are any big loss. But just to be clear for folks who are new to blogging, on blogs such as WordPress and Movable Type (I almost wrote Multiple Type!), commenting is managed with spam-prevention tools and various levels of comment moderation. I’d be pounded with spam if I left comments fully open. Moderation adds a layer of work, but Typepad users are appproved automatically.

A good plugin is [not] hard to find. :)

]]>
By: tangognat http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/comment-page-1/#comment-124 Sat, 07 May 2005 18:22:16 +0000 http://walt.lishost.org/?p=40#comment-124 I think your blog hasn’t been around long enough to attract some of the really bad computer generated spam. If you wind up in a situation where the volume of spam starts to overwhelm the wordpress defaults, there are a couple good wordpress plugins like the spaminator or spam karma that can help out. I use a combo of the spaminator and the wordpress defaults and I haven’t run into any major problems.

]]>
http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/feed/
walt.lishost.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-48
21767
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RVMLXNBVTHWAPYOD5TCMNFRAESK36KDM
<urn:uuid:b4101165-3959-4513-ad70-02c47a5bdc65>
2015-12-01T14:41:51Z
67.228.246.130
sha1:KNMSCFMUDMHCP5XJLD6FTUAONCGVPKKQ
<urn:uuid:0cc42222-4464-439b-aa78-ad91db193034>
http://walt.lishost.org/2005/05/the-scourge-of-conversations/feed/
response
<urn:uuid:973918b5-2ced-4eca-a8b7-f7a436dfb281>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-48
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for Nov 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf