Scrolling off the bottom

[mmcirvin]

On 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.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

I've never seen a thread go on for longer than I could read it, but I wanted to chip in in favor of moderation. You didn't note that we all moderate our own comments section. If a troll makes a comment, they can be deleted by the owner of an LJ. That counts for something.

I don't check the email address that feeds new comments to me that often. Maybe I should change it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's true, though usually the amount of moderation that is needed is pretty light. (At least as compared to the Usenet forum I used to moderate, in which every post had to be vetted in advance by a moderator and then relayed to the Usenet stream through occult and ramshackle technical means.)

In blog comments in general, the fact that the blogger is undisputed monarch of the blog also helps a little; if you object to the moderation policy you can get your own damn blog (though some people do complain anyway, particularly when getting into "my comments policy is more enlightened than yours" fights).

[http://users.livejournal.com/erasmus__/]

In the left political world, flaming seems to be rampant. Well, it used to be. And that's not to speak of crazy people (not an exaggeration-- I mean actual people with mental health problems).

Speaking of which, one of the people who I complained about being left-nasty sortof apologized to me, after an experience as a decisionmaker where she got attacked (before the decision, in anticipation by both sides that she wouldn't decide "their"way). She seemed much more open than she was a few weeks ago that maybe we need to build a culture of dialog, bridge-building and persuasion over shouting.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

On the political blogs there's some participants flaming each other, especially on the group blogs, but what I see more of is the sort of venting jeremiad in which the author flames everybody and everything in the country, often in an implicit "present company excepted" sense. If they're called on the more intemperate statements they'll often say they were venting, and argue that venting is a legitimate form of political expression. It's certainly an understandable form in the current national situation. Where I get into trouble is that I too often try to take these things seriously.

(I also think that Hunter S. Thompson did a lot to legitimize hyperbolic venting throughout his career. I've remarked before that the jeremiads often seem to be consciously or unconsciously imitating Thompson's style.)

Whereas on the right, it's more likely that the author will say a bunch of ugly or threatening things about more specific groups of people and then claim to have been joking—the Ann Coulter dodge.