by Flemming Funch
Several people have asked me recently why I don't have comments enabled on my public newslog. I guess I'll consider activating it if I make some changes first. See, there's first the problem of a muddling of different spaces on the net. My newslog appears primarily in two rather different settings. It appears as ming.tv and the majority of people see it there, and there is no commenting. And then it appears inside the NCN member area. That appears as much more of a sheltered community environment, as there's a relatively small number of newslogs (50-100) and they are shown in one list, and it is very easy to jump around between them, and they look very similar, and there's an aggregate newslog which shows all the posts from all of them. For my log, comments are enabled there, as it is for most people who post there. And there's a very friendly crowd of supportive people who will pay attention to everything that is posted in any of the logs. I appreciate the comments and feedback there very much. But part of the problem is that it is such a fairly cozy environment that most commenters take for granted that we're all hanging out just in here. Whereas I mostly write my newslog for the people 'out there', who mostly exist in different environments and write their weblogs with very different software.
My solution will probably be to make it more self-evident in NCN which newslogs are very public and which ones are only local, and then on the public face of newslogs, making it easier and more seamless to post comments to them. Maybe with an easy one-time NCN registration, and then being recognized the next time you come by. See, I have somewhat bad experiences with completely open commenting, where people can just type in a phoney name and e-mail and run away. Most serious posters wouldn't mind a quick registration, I think.
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