comments on an analysis of comment is free

Nico Macdonald has written an interesting analysis of the Guardian's Comment is Free for the Online Journalism Review. Nico suggests that "The Guardian's attempt to build an engaging group blog further illustrates the cultural differences between running a newspaper and an online conversation". It's a good and valid point but those cultural differences can, I think, be resolved.

The old way to ensure site stickiness was to build online communities using message board forums, chat and email discussions. Owning the registration database and the discussion platform ensured that users would - had to - come back in order to participate. But it also meant expensive infrastructure, moderation costs and increased legal risks.

Comment is Free, which Macdonald's article says is based on the Huffington Post, moves away from that model. But, according to Macdonald, the comment at the bottom of an article format doesn't, for various reasons, work particularly well:

"...quality of discussion has been a significant issue for Comment is Free – though it is as much of an issue for other online publications. Discussions may start well, but they tend to lose focus and collapse, with commentators engaging in personal attacks on each other or the author."

Macdonald also recognises that much of the conversation that is initiated by blog posts takes place not in the comments but on other blogs. He cites trackback as a possible resource for helping readers and contributors track this conversation and quotes the Guardian's Ben Hammersley as saying they've had to disable trackback due to trackback spam.

Inexperienced bloggers often ask me about trackback. It's a tool that would have been useful had it not been plagued by so much spam and I reckon most bloggers, particularly high profile ones, pay much if any attention to them these days.

Another tool that Macdonald mentions is technorati, which can help people track inbound links from other blogs. This is the tool, and method, of choice for most serious bloggers I know although it's certainly not perfect.

Macdonald reckons that Comment is Free needs to pay more attention to standard online community management practices, like giving users profiles, ensuring comments are posted quickly, etc. He feels that this might provide the solution for what he feels is one of the key problems for Comment is Free:

It is not clear that the Comment is Free has yet got the commenters it wants. The reality is that the people the Guardian would really want leading the commentary on its pieces aren't doing it at all yet. They are still writing letters, or posting on their own Weblogs – which are rendered almost invisible in the Comment is Free space.

Whilst all sound analysis and recommendations, I can't help but think that Macdonald should have gone further and suggested that it actually doesn't matter if there are comments no a blog post itself, only that readers are able to find the conversations whereever they might be. So, for example, the comments on my post here might be non-existent, or utter non-sense, but I really don't mind so long as I can find any reasonable or intelligent discussions that it kicks off - whether that's on forums, blogs, email, or wherever. As Macdonald says, at the moment, that's just not possible with Comment is Free.

So maybe the solution isn't to sort out the whole comments thing and build in user profiles, but to figure out a way to better point users towards the conversation, wherever it happens.

Yes, this is another linking out is good post and yes, I'm about to say the same old thing: when people discuss your blog or other content on their blog, they tend to link back and members of their audience who may never have otherwise found you will visit your site and might just become regulars:

• Old way: build technology, manage community = expensive stickyness, keep audience
• New way: start discussion, link out to wherever it is = inexpensive stickyness, gain new audience

Either way you build audiences of regular followers. With the old way, however, you don't build reach in the same way as you do in the new way. Using the old way, newspaper (and other sites) simply keep their existing audience. The new way finds and builds new audiences.

Macdonald's article is both interesting and insightful, but I think he's fallen into a bit of a trap: he talks about the "cultural differences between running a newspaper and an online conversation" yet fails to break out of the old business model where websites build community on their own sites in the quest for greater page views and ad revenue. The trick is to break out of that model for long enough to realise that catering to the old, albeit loyal, user community isn't good enough these days - sites have to attract users from elsewhere and the best way to do that is to ensure that your site, and your users, are a part of the wider conversation.

Comments

[Craig McGinty]

Bang on the button.

Become the guide and stepping off point to start conversations wherever they occur and people will return to see who you are pointing to and what you are writing yourself.

Am I right in thinking this was the idea behind the links to blogs the BBC featured on its technology index page in the past few days?

[David Brake]

You should mention the pluses and minuses from a direct revenue point of view - the plus is that if you link to comments elsewhere then you don't have any legal requirement to ensure the comments are not libellous or to moderate them in any way. The minus of course is that they get any revenue from ads on their comment, not you. And there's the ever-present risk that having left your site to visit a blog comment the reader won't come back in that session (is there any data on whether this loss of readers actually happens?). Automatic finding of links to a given post would be the most cost-free way to do the outlinking but this requires you to rely on the effectiveness of an external service like Technorati. For a news-based service I wonder if Technorati updates its in-links fast enough. You would want to know about new links in almost immediately.

[RobinH]

Hi Craig. I'm going to see if I can find out re: the related blogs links you've been noticing on the BBC News website. (commented updated 13.15: I noticed that Craig blogged about the related links appearing on his own post the other day: http://www.cmnw.co.uk/2006/08/bbc_highlights_.html)

David, I did mention the cost of moderation, technology and the increased legal risk as being the (substantial) downside of building community onsite. Many sites with successful communities actually find those costs to be unsustainable - it's a bit like the increased bandwidth costs faced by successful audio/video heavy sites in that it doesn't scale nicely.

As far as users coming back, here's my thinking: If a user comes to a site and doesn't find something they expected to find, they're going to leave. If you don't have that content, but help the user find it, they'll come back next time they're looking for something like that. If I read a post and follow a link to another post that they've sourced, I'll often post in the conversation then forget to add it to my co.mments list (a useful tool - thanks Graham!). I effectively lose that site and conversation. I remember, however, the site I started out on and that's where I go back to the next time I have a moment to browse.

I don't have evidence that this is what most web users do, but the Wasthington Post gets 1/3 of their traffic from inbound links on blogs and I dare say their prominent display of technorati and de.licio.us doesn't in anyway work against that level of inbound linkage.

[Darren Waters]

For those who want to know about why were are linking to blogs now directly on the BBC Nrws Tech page....

With regards to linking to a blog on the page - we take a view each day to see if there is a blog/blogger whose posting merits being highlighted on the page.

The criteria - which is evolving - is:

* We choose who we flag up. We don't accept suggestions or canvassing!
* The blogger must be known within the Blogosphere as an expert or someone whose opinions count
* The blog must conform to the sorts of websites that the BBC is happy to link to.
* The topic must be connected to the current agenda - either directly related to a story on the day or part of a broader range of issues that the Technology pages examines.

I hope that helps. Feel free to drop me a line with any other thoughts or questions.

[Suw Charman]

Some really good points. Regarding David's comment, if you are pulling in links from the blogosphere via Technorati or any other such service, you are actually providing an incentive for people to write more on their own blogs about the issues raised on CiF, which is good for both CiF and the bloggers: CiF gets a higher profile and more visitors from the links that the bloggers give them, and bloggers get move visitors back from CiF. You would, theoretically, see a good two-way flow. I would suspect that this flow would be beneficial for advertising revenue, more so than letting CiF stagnate in a scummy pool of ad hominem attacks.

However, raising the quality of comments is much harder than just slapping in some trackback-replacement. It's much more about engagement by the original writer, community moderation, and reworking the social contract made between commenters in a more positive manner. These are not necessarily easy issues to solve, but to make CiF a resource worth having will take a lot of work. I believe it would be worth it though.

[Craig McGinty]

Many thanks Robin and Darren for answering my question. I'll update my own site to point to the comment.

[Oaxaca]

"The trick is to break out of that model for long enough to realise that catering to the old, albeit loyal, user community isn't good enough these days - sites have to attract users from elsewhere and the best way to do that is to ensure that your site, and your users, are a part of the wider conversation"

At the moment RSS enables content to be embedded in web sites. What's really needed is tool that enables functionality to be embedded. This is why 'next generation' social software offerings will enable the functionality of a 'central' site' to be disaggregated and embedded in another site. What's more, the end user must be able to do it.

Like the DIY construction industry, the implications of the 'end user' supplying itself in this way are far reaching.