The Great Comment Count

Jason Kottke has a piece about stories that get record numbers of comments. In my experience writing and running Apple Matters there is a great thrill in seeing stories take off with a ton of comments. Indeed, the thrill is so good I sometimes found myself thinking about it while writing. I could also tell that some of the other writers on Apple Matters were doing the same thing. This is dangerous. Trying to write for commenters leads to stories that aren’t genuine.

So I decided to set a policy for the site and make it clear to everything. As a publisher I would much rather have a well-written piece on Apple Matters that doesn’t get a lot (or any) comments than a story that is just inflammatory.

That said, the site is as much about the readers (and commenters) as much as it is about the writers. Building community is important, and if stories aren’t getting any comments (with the occasional exception) I feel like we aren’t engaging our reader base.

Not sure though, care to comment!

Posted by on 03/18 at 07:30 AM

  1. Hi Hadley
    I was clued in to your work by my Mum who knows your mother, so that is the orign of my link to your work. But my motivation to comment arises more from my own professional interests - related to the emergnece of the potential of the present. From a policy point of view I’m not sure that the longevity of a community is the key variable. My suspicion is that every comment is a “community” or more neutrally a nascent network node. The key issue, I think, in this context is the ease/rate at which networks are born and die, can be entered and exited. Your site is a node of nodes and it isn’t the success of any one node that counts, but the ease with which nodes are created, allowed to die, engaged with and forgotten. Perhaps not an overly “commercial” perspective on traffic to “a property” but a criterion for discussion of policies related to assessing posts in terms of the number of comments...?

    Posted by Riel Miller  on  04/17  at  11:24 AM

  2. I wish you luck in developing a community of your own. Your Wii post brought back memories of classic nintendo for me. Cheers.

    Posted by David Murphey  on  02/13  at  08:05 PM
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