Category Archives: blog comments

>Is your blog really a blog

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>Not so long ago, the word blog had no meaning, in fact it did not even exist. Nowadays what sets web sites, called blogs by their owners, apart from other web sites is not always clear. Initially a blog was non other than a web log, a web log being a web site where a person enters logs. A log being any type of information recorded with a date tag. No matter what your web site looks like, if it contains dated text entered chronologically, it probably qualifies as a blog.

Blogs have evolved to become more than just logs, they’ve become online resource centers for people seeking all types of information on various topics. In fact most bloggers now provide shortcuts to their content based on categories or topics covered by the content rather than the date and time the content was written (…), others have gone even further to transform what used to be their blog into a more complex web site which includes the blog among other sections. This later model is not new but going from blog only to blog among other things seems not to be so common among bloggers.

Would you have guessed that all those long sentences were meant to introduce my comments on whether a blog should allow comments or not? Probably not.

I recently wrote about Kumiko Suzuki removing comments completely from her blog (cashquests) and then dedicating an entire post to the benefits of not having to worry about comments. Right after she had removed the ability to comment on her blog, she published a paid review of John Chow’s blog – notice Kumiko Suzuki does not disclose when the reviews published on her blog are paid. Though in this particular case John Chow did write on his own blog that he had ordered the review from Ms Suzuki – . After realizing that cashquests’ readers were not able to react to Ms Suzuki review of his blog, John Chow wrote “I dare say that a blog without a comment system isn’t a blog.” Then Ms Suzuki replied on her own blog with a post that shows, in my opinion, why she still has many fans (be aware that she included a partial picture of a naked woman in the post though it’s only R rated, not X rated ). Of course all this sounds more like a reality television show, it’s entertaining, a bit dramatic and rather pointless.

The fact is, there are countless blogs, and many very popular ones who don’t allow comments (Google’s official blog for example). Different people have different reasons for not allowing random visitors to leave comments on their blog, it does not make their web site less of a blog, it only makes some visitors – like me- feel like outsiders especially when the reader does not consider a particular blog to be solely an information outlet but an open door to a really small part of another person’s life.

Having said all this, do I think that Cashquests is a blog? Yes and no. Yes, because I regularly receive email updates from the website containing dated posts. No, because if you visit the site you’ll see that the posts are not dated, they are presented in an order that is only assumed to be chronological.

Nowadays, most blogs are not logs of anything except for the day and time the posts are published.

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No comments Please

>No Comments Please

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>I’ve been following Kumiko Suzuki and her cashquest for a while. I find her to be an “interesting” blogger. Lately she’s written a very long post to glorify the virtues of not having comments enabled on her blog. I find it a curious attitude seeing how avidly she comments on John Chow’s blog for instance.

She writes on the benefits of not having comment on your blog, “Productivity will increase: When a question is asked in the comments, I feel it is polite to reply. Furthermore, when someone disagrees with me, I feel obliged to correct them on why they are wrong. Without having to spend time doing this, my productivity has increased and I’ve been able to spend more time researching content.” She only forgot to add that she also has more time to spend commenting on other people’s blog.

She also writes, “Without comments, there is definitely a decrease in the community feeling of the site. However, I believe that a blog isn’t a community in the first place. If Cash Quests were a community everybody would have an equal chance of having their voices heard and there wouldn’t be just one person writing 90% of the content for the site – and taking 100% of the revenue! A blog is part of a community of bloggers but it isn’t a community itself.” What a blog is not a community? Tell that to MyblogLog.

Will I still read her blog? Probably, I’ve subscribe to it by email. Will I keep writing about her? As long as I find her interesting enough. Will I link to her blog? Yes, if I write about her but I’ll probably use nofollow.