Kami's Corner

Why Comment Sections suck - re:I want to comment on your blog post

Heya! Kami here. Today I wanna talk about this blogpost made by forking mad that advocates for adding comment sections to your blog.

In my opinion, the comment section is probably the single worst thing to have ever happened to online discussion.

I don't mind if you add one to your blog - you do you. I just really don't like them and will do my best not to use them if i can.

Lemme explain.

First of all:

No. I don't want to make an account just to comment on your blog.

And I don't want my replies to things to be scattered across twenty different indieweb services. Believe it or not, but when I write something I would like to be able to still find and read that a month, two years, or even 10 to 20 years in the future. I want to have some kind of reassurance that when I communicate with you I will have records of that that last and are easily accessible in one place.

I trust herman to keep bearblog around for a while. And I can export all of my bearblog data and back it up somewhere else. I can't do that with most comment sections, at least not easily. And I don't trust every comment section provider to be around forever or to not wipe my comments. I don't want to have blind faith in the uptime of the 25 different comment services people use.

Second:

They're probably the worst medium for communication.

Comment sections make it very easy to comment on stuff. That is the problem. Part of the reason discussion on bearblog is fairly civil compared to most other social media is the fact that there's no comments on most blogs. When you want to make a response you have to either email the person or write a response post. That small barrier to entry cuts out most idiots. Because you have to actually care about what you have to say to sit down and write an email or to make an entire response post. You have to put in some effort. And I think that that's generally condusive to online discussion. Because it means the people that read the first five sentences or just the headline of your post and then get mad and write something stupid can no longer do that. You don't get that completely meaningless drivel you get on, say, youtube. And if you just want to say "good job", you can absolutely do that. I'd say it's more meaningful in the form of an email or response post. Because it shows you cared enough to put in some effort to deliver that message. If you just kind of enjoyed a blogpost and want to show appreciation, there's the toast button. If you want to offer any deeper criticism or express your appreciation in a more nuanced way, write an email or make a response post.

Sure, you might say: Oh, just delete the stupid comments. I guess, you can do that, but the problem is that the format encourages that sort of interaction. People generally tend to be more terse and less thourough in what they write. Because, well: They don't know what your comment section allows:

  1. Does it remove comments with any links?
  2. Does it just remove comments that have a lot of links?
  3. Does it remove comments with swear words?
  4. Does it remove comments from people with "untrustworthy" email hosts?
  5. Will it just throw an error if i submit my comment? I have no clue if the people running it are at all competent.
  6. Does it have an upper character limit? If yes, will it tell me or just throw the comment away silently?

So, you generally play it safe. You don't cite sources, you use safe language, you write small comments. At least I do. Because I don't know if the people running your comment section have any idea what they're doing, and how much they allow. My response blogposts are essentially just comments. These are the kinds of comments i posted on social media before i started writing blogposts. Does your commenting service allow for comments this long? And there's that sort of implicit assumption that comments are temporary. They're not made to last, so people write them like they're not made to last. They just tend to say whatever and move on. It's a format that encourages short quips, trite jokes and "gotcha moments" and discourages people genuinely engaging with a topic.

Third:

They have horrible UX

Comment sections encourage just shouting into the void. As I just said, they're a terrible medium for communication. Let's say I give you some feedback about your post via your comment section and you respond.

Here's some scenarios for how that could play out:

The comment service doesn't have email notifications: I don't ever see your comment, nothing happens.

It does have email notifications but I misspelled my email: Also nothing happens - In contrast, email clients usually tell you when the email you're trying to send to doesn't exist. And obviously, the email you're sending from would be correct.

I spelled my email correct and get the notification:
Now I have to:

  1. Open my Notes app, because I have yet to see a comment section that saves your comment draft so it doesnt disappear when you accidentally refresh (this has happened to me enough times on mobile to have probably stolen a couple hours of off my lifespan. I write long comments.)
  2. Copy my comment from the notes app
  3. Open the email app again and click on your link
  4. Finally paste in my comment

"Oh, but what If you can just reply via email and it appears in the comment section" - Congratulations, you have reinvented the concept of a mailing list. Go become a kernel.org contributor or something. Also I haven't heard of any comment section that actually does this.

Fourth:

There's no situation where they are the ideal form of communication.

If I want to talk to you privately, i send you an email. Comments are public, so that's obviously not a use-case here.

If I want to talk to you publicly, I make a response post. People not on your blog will also be able to see that in bearblog discovery - When I respond to something publicly, i generally want it to be seen.

If I want to talk to you publicly, but not so publicly that lots of people end up seeing it, I make it so the blogpost doesn't show up on bearblog discover. You can still see it in your analytics if i link to you. It's on my blog, which is the canonical representation on all the stuff i post publicly online, and is a place that I control. Not some tech startup.

If I care enough to want to respond publicly but don't care enough for it to be worth making a blogpost, then I guess it would be optimal? But I don't think that's a situation anyone has ever been in. Making a blogpost isn't that hard compared to just commenting.

Firth:

Does your comments host care about my rights?

I don't know. I don't want to read the TOS to find out. For example, komments.cloud "conditions of use" say:

"you relinquish all ownership of the content of the comment, beyond being credited for writing it."
I would like to own the things i write, thank you very much.
I don't have the time or energy to look this up for every commenting service.

I also don't know if your commenting service lets me easily delete all my comments.

Maybe, at some point, I realize that I want all my data to be gone off of that service. Maybe they did something terrible. Maybe I just felt like doing it. Maybe it's some mysterious third reason. Under EU law, it is my right to be able to do that, but often big (and small) tech companies just don't respect it, and I certainly do not have the time or money to be able to get a lawyer involved in those cases.

Bearblog has a "delete my blog" button that deletes my blog and all the stuff i made. Does your commenting service? No guarantee. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Who knows. I'm alright with this when it comes to email because there's not one big entity that controls all of my emails. There's my email provider, sure, but I only have to do research once on whether or not I can delete my account there, and not every time i send an email to a different person.

It's kind of inherent to the format that you can't delete your mails from other peoples inboxes. Emails aren't public, and they're not controlled by one entity and are an open standard, so I'm far more comfortable with not being able to delete stuff i send over there. A commenting service is none of those things. According to komments.cloud's privacy policy they will let me delete my account, but I do not want to have to read a privacy policy every time i want to comment on a site that uses a different service. And privacy policies and enforcement of those policies can change. I do not want to have to keep track of this.

So, yeah. I left regular social media for bearblog precisely because it doesn't have comment sections. I don't mind if anyone adds one to their blog - they can obviously do that - but I don't think they should be on every blog. I certainly won't ever add one to mine. This isn't because I don't care about what other people have to say; it is precisely because I do care that I hate comment sections. If someone has something to say to me, they should make a response post or email me. Or, I don't know, stalk me on the internet to figure out where I live and then send me a carrier pidgeon. That would still be a more effective way to communicate.