Common Craft Blog
Should we have Threaded Discussion Across Blogs?
By leelefever on February 11, 2005 - 8:33am
Apparently people want to hold a threaded conversation across blogs. From what I can tell, the goal is to be able to reply to a specific comment in a blog as a Trackback and have the text from your Trackback appear as a reply to a specific comment. This creates threaded comments, with the comments coming from other blogs via Trackbacks.
Glenn Reid speculates about his version here and Roger Benningfield has been working on this for 5 years.
I'm usually idealistic about this type of thing. I usually think, man- that could really work- how cool! Not this time. I feel like this is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. As you've seen, I believe that blogs and message boards are two different things and they play two different roles. To morph them together may take the power away from each.
The biggest thing for me is lack of context. On a message board, all the replies and threads are within the context of the same space. Everyone that uses that space is using as a "place" that often has a culture and style of its own. The place is often the glue that holds things together.
The same thing is true for the blog readers who end up reading an out of context post that is actually a reply to some comment in another blog. I don't think that is very appealing.
In breaking discussion into individual blogs is to break the context of the discussion into individual writing styles and environments. Technologically it could be done, I just wonder if it *should* be done.
Roger acknowledges a similar concern this in his entry:
I think the idea itself may have limited appeal, though.
Blog entries are more like "seeder" posts in a forum... they typically stand alone reasonably well, and spur descendant discussion. I suspect that a blog which is full of conversational responses to entries in other spaces will read like crap when viewed in isolation.
Thanks to Nancy for the pointers.
Should we have Threaded Discussion Across Blogs?
Lee: "As you've seen, I believe that blogs and message boards are two different things and they play two different roles. To morph them together may take the power away from each."
I think there are two very different issues here.
(1) Merging blogs and discussion in a unified space is my "thing", and I've got plenty of experience at this point to say it works really, really well. In fact, the two models bring out the best in one another... *when they're tightly integrated*.
Which brings us to (2), and the quote you picked up from me. The kinds of loosely-coupled discussions that Glenn was asking for are unquestionably susceptible to the issues you raise... there's some definite round-peg-square-hole stuff to work through. Although much of it depends upon how you view and value discussion in the first place.
If you're like me, discussion is It. I don't care that much about "citizen journalism" or "independent publishing"... to me, it's all about reaching out and touching interesting minds. But for some folks, message boards are just places they go to post a question and get an answer. That vital sense of place and history that seems so important to me is something they brush off or ignore entirely, and they have no interest in trading a dozen or more back-and-forth messages to explore an issue.
For *that* type of person, cross-blog "conversation" might be useful. My instinct is to look at the kinda thing as missing the point, but I'm getting old enough to begrudgingly accept that *my* point and *the* point may not be the same thing. (Dammit.)
Should we have Threaded Discussion Across Blogs?
And by the way, Lee... thanks for catching my attention. I've spent the last couple years wound up in the blog-centric corner of cyberspace, and after following some of your links, I realize I may have been ignoring the existence of people with whom I have much more in common.
Even if we disagree about implementation issues, I can look at folks like you and see some unifying bits of underlying perspective. That's something I value highly, so thanks again.
Should we have Threaded Discussion Across Blogs?
I think you make some good points Roger, and I appreciate having caught our mutual attnetion.
On #1 above, I'd be interesting in learning more. I don't think I have the context to know exactly what it is you mean. Perhaps you could give me a tour or pointer sometime?
On #2- I much more attuned to the "community" aspects of the weblog world, which you could say means the discussions, like you. I agree that message boards are best for Q and A. And I could see that, implemented well, blogs could enable more deep diving discussions.
Part of the problem I see is the higher barrier of entry with blogs- meaning (1) you have to have one to participate (2) you have to know how to use it to have a discussion. There are millions of bloggers today who haven't yet figure out TrackBack.
I agree that discussion is where it's at, but I'm still skeptical about blogs being a solid solution. Thanks for your thoughts Roger!
Should we have Threaded Discussion Across Blogs?
Lee: Sorry to take so long getting back to this. I started to respond, realized you were busy with Northern Voice, and then got busy myself.
"Perhaps you could give me a tour or pointer sometime?"
Absolutely... be happy to. Just let me know.
"And I could see that, implemented well, blogs could enable more deep diving discussions."
That actually brings up another issue. Once you get past the basic implementation stuff, the dirty little secret of the blogosphere is that many (most?) bloggers aren't temperamentally suited for fostering open communication. And just to make things more difficult, their tools often encourage them to view blog comments as disposable adjuncts to Real Content. The result can be an all-power-no-responsibility perspective.
I've got my own ideas about addressing that problem, and there are undoubtedly many others. The catch is, of course, that people have to clearly perceive the problem before the solution makes sense.
"Part of the problem I see is the higher barrier of entry with blogs- meaning (1) you have to have one to participate..."
That can be addressed pretty easily, but I'm stop there... I don't want to clog up your comments with something that will read like promotional material.
"(2) you have to know how to use it to have a discussion. There are millions of bloggers today who haven't yet figure out TrackBack."
The big roadblock there is the unpredictability of the process. The UI can be made pretty simple and obvious (too simple, in some cases), but there's no way for the uninitiated to really know what's going to happen to a ping once they send it.