Imagine this scenario:
- You write a post on your blog.
- Someone submits your blog post to a link-sharing site like Digg, StumbleUpon, or FriendFeed.
- Tons of people comment on that link on Digg, Mixx, or FriendFeed, and an interesting conversation ensues independent of your blog.
- Meanwhile, your blog proper has: 0 comments.
Does this bother you as a blogger? How about as a user?
Most predictably, some bloggers feel that this conversation-relocation is detrimental to the blog itself. Comments are part of the reason why readers visit your blog, and moving the comments might mean a drop in traffic. People may misjudge the popularity of your blog if it appears to have no comments.
The contrary opinion is that the blogger has no ownership of the conversation. For example, after you watch a movie, people leave the theater and go to other places to talk about the movie. There is no sanity in requesting the conversation about the movie stay at movie theater.
What’s my take? The above scenario doesn’t bother me. Considering my blog as one destination that everyone must visit sounds decidedly old-fashioned. For a blogger to say that all comments should be retained at the original blog sounds like something a newspaper website would say. It stems from that same provincialism that discourages linking to other websites, or splitting articles into ten pieces in order to retain traffic.
So how do you feel about the above scenario? If it concerns you, can you suggest any possible solutions?
