My comment on other bloggers saying “no comment!”

Some of the best bloggers in the Milwaukee-area do not allow comments.

These include, best viagra cialis sale but are not limited to:

Charlie Sykes
Jessica McBride
John McAdams
Peter DiGaudio

And while each of them are completely within their rights to prohibit comments, clinic I have to say I think it’s contradictory to the special nature of blogging.

Turning off comments:

• Transforms a conversation into a lecture.

• Diminishes the special sense of community that blogging engenders.

• Recreates the one-way nature of traditional media in a space that usually serves as an antidote to traditional media.

Both Jessica and Peter posted their reasons for not allowing comments on their blogs.

Basically, shop they felt that many of the comments they received were ugly and off-topic.

My answer to that is to not approve comments you don’t want on your blog or delete them if they sneak through.

Of course, they had considered this, but they were under the impression that deleting, editing or not accepting posts would somehow make them legally responsible for whatever their commenters wrote.

Well, let me ease that fear by pointing out what the Electronic Freedom Foundation has to say on the matter:

Your readers’ comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it.

And if newspapers can accept Letters to the Editor without being sued out of business, why can’t bloggers accept comments?

So come on guys…turn your monologues back into dialogues.

I’m sure we’d all love to drop by and say “hi!”

11 comments January 7th, 2006