Link: Editorial style and the curated conversation

Following a previous post, Reflections on the curated conversation (following the raging ongoing debate about the usefulness of blog comments that John Gruber and others have been going back and forth on), Bernard Yu makes a great point about editorial style and its effect on – the tone and style of the author’s content will greatly influence the quality of readers’ comments:

In a Twitter conversation on the curated conversation, Mr. Tom Henrich said that different audiences affects the type of readers we have, which affects the type of comments we receive. He is completely correct. However, that is not all.

When we write about nonsense, our readers will think about nonsense. If we write poorly, our readers won’t respect our words. But when we write about things that matter, our readers will think about things that matter. Yes, good and thoughtful writing will attract an audience that cares about being thoughtful; but when people read thoughtful writing, it puts them into that frame of mind as well.

– Sneak-Attack Philosophy, Editorial style is important for the curated conversation

While I completely agree that the tone set by the author definitely contributes to the eventual tone of readers’ comments, I wonder if the inherent easiness (low barrier to entry) of a provided comment box leads to lower quality posts. There’s less effort required to leave a simple comment on someone else’s site than to craft a well-written response post on your own site (if you have one). This is immediately obvious on some sites; to quote Bernard’s earlier article:

The comments on most large sites like Slashdot, and YouTube are hardly worth reading. They are mostly empty drivel that add little to the conversation.

And a tidbit by Gruber in the same vein:

Comments, at least on popular websites, aren’t conversations. They’re cacophonous shouting matches.

What if YouTube didn’t offer a comment box under each video? Would we still see the level of idiocy – and the sheer volume of it – that we see today? I doubt it. Many of those people only bothered to word-vomit all over the comments because it was so easy to do so, not because they sincerely believed in the value of their comment.

But overall… yes, Bernard is absolutely right. The author sets the tone, and then (hopefully) the readers follow suit with their comments.