From the Orient

There’s a new version of AmphetaDesk out. Took 5 minutes to upgrade. I will get round to posting my thoughts on using it, I promise.

Aquarion comments on my earlier thoughts

Some weblogs don’t do comments, Mark being a prime example, because they don’t fit with the style of the blog, or because the author doesn’t want them, but claiming some evolutionary advantage in not allowing people who don’t have their own weblog to comment is not good.

I’m not claiming anything of the sort, and would never try to do so. My comment “I think comments are losing their purpose” should really have a “for me” added to the end. I also pointed out that comments were better for literary styles, and I should have added that I see journals as literary (I split off my technical weblog from my journal for this reason)

There is no reason not to have a new system in as well as comments, and fail to see why Aquarion feels this is insulting and elitist. Is it insulting that Mark Pilgrim only allows people who link to him to have a snippet of what they say on his webpage, instead of having comments? No, it is up to him what he puts on his webpage.

My idea was only trying to further the discussion, and at no point did I want it to mean “This system replaces Comments once and for all”. If people want comments, let them use comments. If they want pingback/trackback/referrals, let the use them. If they want both, hurray. Plus it was only an idea; one I got flamed for *sigh* I’m off to poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick because I hate insulting, elitist people.

I’m seriously considering turning off comments after Mark’s Club vs Lojack essay. In any case, I think comments are losing their purpose as the weblogging world progresses, using tools such as referrers, pingbacks and trackbacks.

Part of the reason is that the new weblogging software that I’ll see using shortly does not yet have comments enabled. (Coming soon, I designed a default style for it yesterday).

A big problem with comments is that it is very hard to follow a discussion in the comments system. Stuart has pointed out in the past that it is difficult to know if a comment you have made has been replied to, and tracking your comments across multiple blogs and systems is very difficult.

It is now easier to write a comment about a post in your own blog, and see the resulting referral in a “further reading” section, driven either by pingback, trackback, or referral system. It is possible then to follow the discussion better as it passed from permalink to permalink.

Is this a better method than the comments system? I’m not sure. It is easy to see if your comment (blog entry) has been replied to this way, but is it easier to read the discussion. The comments are all in one place, and can be read sequentially. Linked blog entries require multiple clicks and a bit of concentration to be able to follow what is going on.

What is needed is some software that can spider thought these links and produce a page showing the links. blogdex works in this manner. You can see all the weblogs that have linked to a particular link.

Comments work for weblogs that are of a more literary nature. (Burningbird, Caveat Lector, The Hoopla500) where you are more likely to want to make a comment (”great essay”) than discuss it in your blog. In fact it is less likely the reader will have a blog to be able to do this. Personally, I am quite happy for email to replace that.

People were wondering what Microsoft would gain from allowing an XML output from Office 11. Well this article may explain why :

Earlier versions of Windows won’t be able to run Office update, Microsoft admits.

Mark Pilgrim’s futher reading feature is most impressive. The comment “they’ll judge based on people’s words” is a key point, and makes it more than a popularity contest. One has to be careful what you type in the paragraph around the link.

For example in a recent post on comments, Aquarion simply says “Via Mark” whilst Simon Willison proves a concise summary of the post. (Both methods are completely fine in their own context, but highlights why I chose the List o Links method).

Top marks must go to Distractions who puts:-

“I’m trying to figure out how to get my blog to show up in Mark Pilgrim’s site further reading on today’s posts section. This is allegedly generated automatically by polling his referrer logs to link back to sites which link to his.”

Of course, if anyone clicks though to Mark’s page from here, I might appear in the Further Reading section. I’m not sure how that will be handled, as links do no appear in the quotes.

You want to know what’s really annoying?

When you are designing a web page, spending ages trying to get the background colour right, you see one and go “That’s the one!”.

only to realise that this is the background colour you chose for the BODY two hours ago