It took some four years and a few weeks to receive 10,000 comments here at MakeYouGoHmm and wanted to take a minute and thank all of you who have left comments whether it be one comment or hundreds over the years.

I hope you will continue doing so. I enjoy receiving on topic, non-spammy comments. One way to my blog-friendly heart is a well thought out related comment or two way trackback that advances, supplements or improves the original post in some way, shape or form. I lean toward the view that blog posts don’t have to be as time sensitive as some make them out to be. I’ve seen posts years old continue to get new life pumped into it by fresh, valuable comments and it’s inspiring to continue the keyboard journey along with you, dear readers.

If you do the math over the days the numbers, for those who like to see them, work out something like this:

365 x 4 years = 1,460 days
+ 24 days
= 1,484 total days / 10,000
= 6.8 comments a day (rounded up)

Over the last year the commenting activity has increased dramatically. On July 11, 2006 Hmm had received 5,889 comments with Sterling being the most prolific commenter with 359 comments.

(Update November 14, 2008 10:00am PST: I’m not sure what query I was using to come up with the stat that comment activity has “increased dramatically” because a post created today sharing the query results shows a decrease from 4,940 comments in 2006 to 3,642 in 2007. I didn’t break the data down by month, so it’s possible there was an increase from July to July, but I’d call into question the characterization of “dramatic” and thus have struck that in the sentence above.)

Today, July 23, with 10,000+ comments and counting from 4,045 different people, Sterling still has the most comments, raising his total to 542. Sterling has several others hot on his trail though including darkmoon, Lestat and FrancisoIV, so who knows where things will be a year from now.

Nice, thank you again!

How many published posts over that time?
4,381 published posts / 1,484 days
= 2.95 posts per day

The most popular commented thread remains the Nintendogs post which has well over 500 comments and counting (four yesterday). There are many posts with zero comments and plenty in between 0 and 500+.

One of the common concerns I read and hear from other bloggers with comments enabled is: how can I get more comments? I’ve written with specific suggestions on the topic before, but looking back over the last 4+ years, I’d say the number one way to get more comments is to write posts in a way that invites them. If your posts are written more standoffish or not open to outside opinion, then you’ll receive less comments. It’s ok to write posts that don’t invite comments once in awhile, but if you want to get something, like some other things in life, you have to ask for it. You have to step up and tell your readers: you know what, I really like reading what you have to say.

Some people like Joel Spolsky who claims to have learned this from Dave Winer would rather not have comments on their articles. Dave chose not to share his Google PR8 and instead opened up comments in the last year or so a wordpress “mirror” of his site. In a follow-up post, Joel points to TechMeme as having really smart algorithms for putting back together the “intelligent comments” around an article.

Talk about elitism. It’s practically oozing out of Joel’s keyboard. I’ve enjoyed some of Joel’s posts in the past but this post came off as arrogant.

Personally, I think this is a load of bull. It’s perspectives like these who don’t want to — or begrudgingly — share the stage with anybody. They think they are smarter than you or I and would rather have their accountability placed off somewhere else out of sight and mind. Don’t sully up our space. This thinking stinks of 1995 and old media and is everything about the web that doesn’t work in my opinion. If I want to read one way material (which sometimes I do), I’ll make a run for the Border’s.

I’m not saying all bloggers who choose not to have comments enabled are selfish or even that Dave or Joel are selfish, but it’s typical of websites that have the most to give in the form of reach and attention — the bigger and more popular sites — create rules which limit benefits back to the very people who participate at their websites usually for free. It’s these people who click on your ads, buy your products (Mr. Fogcreek Software, Joel) and spread the gospel about what you’re doing. How many of the big sites have user profiles with nofollow on links? How many don’t even offer links to people who participate?

And then there are pieces of work like Guy Kawasaki who outright admits he is too busy to read what you have to say, but surely wants your eyeballs for his textual Picaso. I’m glad we have middle fingers for people like this.

In Joel’s original post he wrote:

When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.

Is Joel actually assuming that readers believe he creates “a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed” only to be ruined by the comment section? Come on, Joel, how smart do you think readers are? You’d think Joel was going to win a Pulitzer by not having comments enabled. Rubbish.

In Joel’s defense, he isn’t completely off base.

Unmoderated comments, especially on larger sites where more flamers and trolls run wild can damage the overall value of the material. The thing that always gets me is who has the most money to moderate comments, bigger or smaller sites? Why doesn’t sites like YouTube and digg offer moderation of comments instead of comment anarchy? What you end up with is people leaving flames calling you names and contributing zero to the content. Some of the comments are funny, I’ll grant them that, but it gets old fast reading 14 year old rants.

I contribute to a few blogs with comments disabled, so am not trying to be hypocritical. I look at comments as something that you have to cultivate like a farmer. If you aren’t going to take the time to moderate them, react and respond, setup rules for what is and isn’t cool or pay others to do it for you then you’re better off not having them at all.

But.

And this is a big but: when your site grows bigger and you’re claiming to want, appreciate and welcome feedback of any kind from others then you really are talking out of both sides of your mouth by not allowing comments in an convenient place for readers. Forcing them to participate at their own site sounds suspiciously like: “I want you to promote me elsewhere.”

Convenient for readers is right below the article or prominently linked below the article
Dave Winer talks about his Scripting News Annex and yet there are no links on Scripting News PR8 to it on each of his posts (some posts links to the conversation). He can tell us all day long if we want to leave a comment, we know where to find him, and yet Dave misses that most readers according to Google anyway should go to Scripting.com first, not his Wordpress.com annex.

Solutions, anyone?
With the Wordpress plugin competition being completed a week from now, I’m working on a plugin that hopefully will be done in time that could help bloggers get a few more comments. It will be GPL licensed, per the contest guidelines. For those who would like to tend to their garden and help grow more comments, I hope it will be welcomed. For the other camp, the people who think they are too smart and too proud to have their precious work marred, they need not and likely won’t apply.

Now here’s to another 10,000 comments, hopefully in less than 4 years this time, but if it’s longer that’s fine too. Thank you again for your comments and the space is waiting below to add your inspiring words of wisdom.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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