Über-blogger, author & tv commentator Andrew Sullivan asked his readers to vote for whether they would like comments or not. He advised his readers (I’m one) that they could vote more than once if they felt strongly:
“You can vote any number of times, so those who care strongly about this - pro and con - can have their passions reflected.”
However, in the same news cycle (that’s 24-hour period for those of us who aren’t news obsessed), he writes:
“… the poll is actually restricted to one vote per IP address…”
This reflects something about Sullivan’s blog…
Sullivan’s convention is what I might unfairly call More of the Same.
I don’t necessarily mean this in a bad way. Or a good way. Sullivan writes some excellent, lengthier posts within the confines of his blog at the Atlantic. But he tends towards bursts. The shared link. The snide remark. The ironic, skewed view of something terribly au courant. The simple poignant thing. the sanity-inducing joke or YouTube vid.
It’s a delightful pot pourri, forsooth! But contrast his collection of memes and themes and its over-arching gestalt of forward-moving blogging momentum with, say, a Glenn Greenwald.
Greenwald often updates his posts — the same post has additional information and may have that information because of the comments section. Sometimes he includes a comment into his update (giving credit) or responses directly to a comment in his update. Sometimes the updates respond to or include email from the subjects Greenwald covers.
This is an entirely different dynamic than what Sullivan has created so far.
Sullivan gives his thoughts — as they are right now. And then, moments, or hours, or weeks or months later, there’s… you guessed it… More of the Same. More of what he’s responding to, rRight Now.
A Comments section, I think, would be great for Sullivan readers. I’d like to see more TrackBacks, while we’re at it. It’s exciting to see how a dialog unfolds in the blogosphere. It would certainly save me time. And it would provide an instant credentialing system for Sullivan, who almost never shares the identity of his readers’ emails because he apparently doesn’t want to name people on the internet as having opinions they don’t. Apparently his staff doesn’t want to fact-check, either. But comments would allow readers to share thoughts with each other without a painful credentialing process.
Am I Fernanda Guadalajara of LatinasConservativasParaAndrew.com ? Check the link yourself.
So.. I think Comments would be great… but I wouldn’t want Sullivan to change his generaly dynamic.
I’d want more of Sullivan reacting on the fly, so the most current thoughts are the most current posts. Let the comments fly where they may with Sullivan reacting in the newest post and linking back to the comment if necessary. The Atlantic must have blogging software with SPAM and content controls for the comments section, so that Sullivan could prune the offensive anti-gay, anti-AIDS survivor comments as easily as he does with his In Box.
So… Yeah. You guessed it. I want More of the Same.
