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Scrolling off the bottom
Dec. 11th, 2005 12:00 pmOn a blog, comment threads are usually attached to blog posts, which are usually listed in reverse chronological order. As a post scrolls down the front page and eventually disappears off the bottom (or off the reader's LJ friends list or RSS aggregator), people become much less likely to keep commenting (even if the thread doesn't have a built-in expiration time). That is an automatic damping force that tends to keep threads from spinning on forever.
In a Web discussion forum using phpBB or something analogous, and on Usenet, the thread structure is more self-organizing; the currency of threads is determined by their activity. That may make it more likely that the posters will organize spontaneously into a real community, but also means that there is no natural damper for endless flamewars.
When people think about this difference, they usually seem to decide that the blog structure is a defect, because it makes it hard to see when new activity is going on in an old thread. But I think it's at least partly a feature, because it also discourages certain types of bad activity (e.g. endless flamewars) from going on forever in an old thread.
I think this is part of why political blogs are more popular than political discussion forums ever were: while comment boards on the blogs can get extremely nasty (especially if the blog itself is nasty), they can get all the nastier if threads don't have this built-in property of expiration through burial in the archives. So the blog format may lend itself more readily to conversation on extremely contentious issues without everything spinning completely out of control.
The damping effect is strongest when the blog is frequently updated. How frequent that has to be depends on how popular the blog is. The Comics Curmudgeon mentioned a consequence of this effect in a recent podcast interview: when a popular blogger goes missing for a few weeks, the comment boards can spontaneously switch to discussion-forum-like behavior in the interim. In the Curmudgeon's case, it resulted in a stronger community spontaneously forming among the comment-board regulars. On a different blog, it could just as easily have led to an apocalyptic flamewar (and really dead blogs are famous for being colonized by spammers).
I've been thinking about this lately because the authors of several webcomics I read either have switched, or are thinking of switching, from a blog-like comment board format to a separate Web discussion forum. There seems to be an idea that this is naturally what you do when the commenter community scales up, that a phpBB board is the big-time version of a comment board. But I'm not so sure that's true. The discussion forum is a qualitatively different thing that is more likely to get out of the author's direct control and away from talking about the comic (which will also make the conversation more inside and less accessible to newcomers). It's also more prone to long-running flamewars. My feeling is that a viable discussion forum probably requires a heavier hand from the core people running it than a comment board does, because the invisible moderating force of the blog-like comment thread organization isn't operating. All this does not necessarily make discussion forums bad, but it's worth considering when making the decision.
In a Web discussion forum using phpBB or something analogous, and on Usenet, the thread structure is more self-organizing; the currency of threads is determined by their activity. That may make it more likely that the posters will organize spontaneously into a real community, but also means that there is no natural damper for endless flamewars.
When people think about this difference, they usually seem to decide that the blog structure is a defect, because it makes it hard to see when new activity is going on in an old thread. But I think it's at least partly a feature, because it also discourages certain types of bad activity (e.g. endless flamewars) from going on forever in an old thread.
I think this is part of why political blogs are more popular than political discussion forums ever were: while comment boards on the blogs can get extremely nasty (especially if the blog itself is nasty), they can get all the nastier if threads don't have this built-in property of expiration through burial in the archives. So the blog format may lend itself more readily to conversation on extremely contentious issues without everything spinning completely out of control.
The damping effect is strongest when the blog is frequently updated. How frequent that has to be depends on how popular the blog is. The Comics Curmudgeon mentioned a consequence of this effect in a recent podcast interview: when a popular blogger goes missing for a few weeks, the comment boards can spontaneously switch to discussion-forum-like behavior in the interim. In the Curmudgeon's case, it resulted in a stronger community spontaneously forming among the comment-board regulars. On a different blog, it could just as easily have led to an apocalyptic flamewar (and really dead blogs are famous for being colonized by spammers).
I've been thinking about this lately because the authors of several webcomics I read either have switched, or are thinking of switching, from a blog-like comment board format to a separate Web discussion forum. There seems to be an idea that this is naturally what you do when the commenter community scales up, that a phpBB board is the big-time version of a comment board. But I'm not so sure that's true. The discussion forum is a qualitatively different thing that is more likely to get out of the author's direct control and away from talking about the comic (which will also make the conversation more inside and less accessible to newcomers). It's also more prone to long-running flamewars. My feeling is that a viable discussion forum probably requires a heavier hand from the core people running it than a comment board does, because the invisible moderating force of the blog-like comment thread organization isn't operating. All this does not necessarily make discussion forums bad, but it's worth considering when making the decision.