Designoplasty Web Design and Development Blog

I have been thinking lately that comments can be placed into one of three categories.

Normal

These are the comments nobody minds. They are the kinds of comments blog owners expect most of the time. They aren’t necessarily pro or con or good or bad, they just are, and they are basically uneventful.

Controversial

Controversial comments have something special about them. They take things in a different direction than the blog owner intended. They are still good comments, although they may not be well received. They express a viewpoint that has some merit. Depending on how the blogger feels they will either leave them or react to them. They often cause other commenters to either agree or disagree, or both. They are good in that they make a blog interesting. They are bad in that sometimes they take the topic away from what the owner of the blog had originally intended, and either wasn’t prepared for or just didn’t want to talk about at all.

Here is a blog post where I left a controversial comment. It’s the first comment, and it started sort of a firestorm which actually was totally unintentional. My comment had merit in the fact that many people agree with it. It was controversial in that it changed the nature of the discussion away from what the blogger had intended and potentially offended the blogger. However, the blogger joined in, so at the end of the day, it’s probably a good blog discussion in that it will be interesting to people. In all cases though, it’s the blogger who decides whether it’s normal, controversial, or destructive based on the blogger’s goals, not on the content of the comments.

Destructive

Most destructive comments are spam, or just completely unrelated to the topic. Some are insulting. But these destructive comments are the obvious ones that people just delete. Some destructive comments are otherwise acceptable but take the topic too far away from what the original post was about in a way the spoils the discussion. Sometime destructive comments are just too many or too long.

I recently had a situation on Doxie News where I posted and a very helpful regular reader just kind of temporarily lost control and posted five long comments in response. One other person posted a small to-the-point question comment, and the destructive comments both gave one potential answer to that question while also preventing further answers by having four comments after the question. Discussion over.

The commenter wasn’t trying to be destructive, it just turned out that way. I’m thinking of offering accounts so regular readers can edit their own comments for this reason.

Alternatives to Controversial Comments

I am a controversial commenter from time to time. Most of the time I don’t mean it as controversial as its interpreted. That’s due to the common problems of tone not being in text. One alternative to controversial commenting is to take control post your feelings in a blog post on your blog instead. I suggested this to the reader I mentioned, and that’s what she did and I am happy to see she remained a reader of my blog. I also did the same thing with this post on Doxie News, although I had originally commented on the other post. But when you choose to post on your blog instead of commenting you get to frame a whole separate discussion. In certain cases that’s better, and sometimes it’s not.