Comments on: traffic http://www.haibane.info/2006/04/20/traffic/ a celebration of science fiction, anime, and geek culture Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:02:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: convergence: blogs and forums at Haibane.info http://www.haibane.info/2006/04/20/traffic/#comment-62 convergence: blogs and forums at Haibane.info Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:54:57 +0000 http://www.haibane.info/2006/04/20/traffic/#comment-62 [...] My earlier comment about traffic really boils down to the fact that it is hard to police a community of blog commentators. However, if you look across the “pond” to the web-based forum, they often don’t have the same kind of problems. Forums like phpbb offer much tighter and fine-grained control over the userbase. [...] [...] My earlier comment about traffic really boils down to the fact that it is hard to police a community of blog commentators. However, if you look across the “pond” to the web-based forum, they often don’t have the same kind of problems. Forums like phpbb offer much tighter and fine-grained control over the userbase. [...]

]]> By: Shamus http://www.haibane.info/2006/04/20/traffic/#comment-54 Shamus Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:50:06 +0000 http://www.haibane.info/2006/04/20/traffic/#comment-54 Stop it. You're embarrasing me. :) You are right that traffic is a curse. Group dynamics change once a blog crosses a certain point and gets "big". When comment threads jump in size so that each post has comments from dozens of people, it becomes hard to have a conversation. Each comment is just an attempt to grab the attention of the readers and be heard above the din. People aren't going to waste their time on long thoughtful responses that will be buried below ten pages of flames and "me too"-ing. So, the more eloquent people clam up, and at the same time the trolls and clowns find themselves with an audience. You can mitigate this by turning off comments and adding a forum, but then it's just a wasteland meta-blogs that you have to babysit. Meh. So yeah. This is the life. :) Stop it. You’re embarrasing me. :)

You are right that traffic is a curse. Group dynamics change once a blog crosses a certain point and gets “big”. When comment threads jump in size so that each post has comments from dozens of people, it becomes hard to have a conversation. Each comment is just an attempt to grab the attention of the readers and be heard above the din. People aren’t going to waste their time on long thoughtful responses that will be buried below ten pages of flames and “me too”-ing. So, the more eloquent people clam up, and at the same time the trolls and clowns find themselves with an audience.

You can mitigate this by turning off comments and adding a forum, but then it’s just a wasteland meta-blogs that you have to babysit. Meh.

So yeah. This is the life. :)

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