BurningbirdJust a quick note that coComments now works with my weblog.
Note, though, that editing with my custom comment editing won’t be reflected in the comment that shows up in this service. In other words, coComments is that annoying friend who remembers everything you said–everything you said–when you were blitzed out of your mind at that party you wished you never, ever, gone to. You know the one I’m talking about. People who attended still look at you strangely.
Happy conversation!
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Adam Green has a suggestion for Doc Searls and his quandry about being a gatekeeper:
The answer is simple Doc, just find a good post from a blogger you haven’t noticed before and link to it. You can direct a firehose of traffic to a blog by doing this. On the basis of karma alone it is a good idea. Think about how you would have felt if one of the cool crowd in high school had asked the buck-toothed kid to sit with them at lunch.
Doc is one of the most loyal webloggers I know. As such, he will rarely, if ever, criticize one of his friends. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I can admire his consistency in his support.
Doc is also willing to link to those who criticize him, and patiently respond to same. I admire him for this. He’s also one of the few A list tech bloggers who will still link to me, and I’ve been critical about his writings for years, so you might say I have a bias in this regard.
But when Doc does link to me, he rarely sends me much traffic. The same can be said for Scoble and Winer and others. In the great scheme of things nowadays, no one weblogger in the tech ranks is really capable of directing that much traffic. There are some in the political sphere, or the heads of the hordes like Boing Boing that might send a lot of traffic one’s way. But the days when the techie A listers ruled the waves are over.
However, even if Doc could direct that much traffic, I would rather he not link me, then to link me because I’m equivalent to the buck-toothed kid being asked to eat lunch with the cool kids. The thought of this makes me feel faintly nauseous.
If I want anything from the A Listers, it’s honesty. It’s following through on their glowing beliefs in this environment. It’s a cessation of the games, and a reduction of the small minded petty meanness that characterizes too many of the A listers (and which makes one realize that perhaps this environment is not so utopian after all).
A Listers: When you make a comment related to something you’ve read one someone’s weblog, link to it. Don’t talk about it in a sideways manner. Don’t wait until someone you approve of writes about the topic and then link to them. Don’t attach ‘nofollow’ or not add a link, because you don’t think they deserve your ‘link juice’.
If one or more people spend a considerable amount of time responding, thoughtfully, to your post, don’t respond only to those who you consider your ‘equal’. Respond to the argument or discussion, not the person. Don’t hold your response to criticism until someone makes it who you consider to be ‘worthy’.
When people are critical, don’t label them with being a bitch, shrill, hysterical, whining (oe whinging), flaming, or any combination of the same. If this environment was full of people who only smiled, who only agreed, who went around as if we’re all partaking of joy joy juice, and nary a harsh word was heard–you wouldn’t be where you are today. You need us. You need us, a hell of a lot more than we need you. Your fans may make you feel good, but it’s your critics who made you famous.
I have no respect for the linking/attention games played and those who play them, and neither should you. When you see this bullshit, call it bullshit. This will do more to ‘tear down the gates’ then begging an A lister, even a nice one like Doc, for a link.
Now excuse me, this buck-toothed weblogger needs to go brush her teeth.
For those of you with coComment, as you’ve found, it doesn’t work at my site. At this time, the coComment folks haven’t released what exactly the software is looking for, so I can’t modify my site to support this concept. I also haven’t finished adjusting all of my software changes into WordPress plugins in order to move back to WordPress, so for now, you’ll have to remember all on your lonesome of you’ve commented here.
Joe Duemer, in a cleverly titled post, tapped me to list out any and all famous people somehow forming decoration in my workspace. I’ve not forgetten that I also have been tapped for 4 things to list my most dangerous idea. All will be answered in one post, the one that is taking me longer than anticipated to write; as is my story with associated photos from the Johnson Shut-Ins trip. My only excuse is that I have been feeling peakly lately, and I’m having to devote most of my energies to work.
I’m also behind on my new development server. The most I’ve done is pick the hosting company, and they’ve installed a basic set of software to get me started. The only page that shows at the moment is the Apache2 welcome page. However, it has a nice shiny installation of PHP5, MySQL 5.0, Ruby on Rails, and a host of other goodies. I should be able to put something useful up. Eventually.
Over the weekend, there was chatter about a conversation index, and how the number of comments you have is an indicator of the depth of the conversation. Frankly, I’m not sure we can have a conversation with our posts and comments, no matter how many people become involved.
When you write a comment to one of my posts, you don’t see me. You don’t know what phone call I’ve just had, or how I’m feeling, or even what necessarily triggers my buttons. You can’t look into my eyes and think to yourself, “Maybe now is not a good time to mention what I’m about to mention”. Conversation isn’t just words, or responses. It’s a whole host of things, such as context, familiarity, surroundings, perceptions, and tone. Most importantly, tone. Whether this tone is conveyed via our voices, or our gestures, it forms a third part of our communication when we have a conversation.
As serendipity would have it, Dave Sifry also released some form of state of the blog report this weekend. He wrote:
We track about 1.2 Million posts each day, which means that there are about 50,000 posts each hour. At that rate, it is literally impossible to read everything that is relevant to an issue or subject, and a new challenge has presented itself – how to make sense out of this monstrous conversation, and how to find the most interesting and authoritative information out there.
…how to make sense of this monstrous conversation… You and I and a thousand or so close, intimate friends are having a conversation. Pity that we can only listen to 846 of each other at any one time. Have no fear, though–we’re tagging more.
The thing is, many of these tags are involuntary–derived from categories found in our syndication feeds. They might be helpful if our conversations consist of each of us talking to ourselves, but I don’t know about us having a conversation with each other. As for interesting and authoritative, according to Google, I’m one of the most authoritative and interesting sources on Dave Sifry–not sure he’d agree with that. I know I don’t agree with him, but I’ll let Ethan and Sir Dave the Slayer of Pomps and Lists stick in the pins by their lonesomes this round.
I thought of conversations last night, and realized that I’ve been doing this now for almost five years–or is it six? I can’t remember anymore–and I can count on my two hands the number of times I’ve had a conversation with the people I’ve met through weblogging. I feel affection, respect, a host of feelings for many of you I’ve known for years–yet we haven’t had, in most cases, one conversation.
Dialogs, debates, discussions, exchanges, quips, repartee, jests, jibes, and jokes, oh yes, all of these. Verbal tears, and written fears and softly typed hopes and dreams; bold anger, and italicized satire, and times when the words become jumbled between thee and me and misunderstandings results. I rather think that you, my fine readers, do a terrific job in my comments–better than the posts many times. But do we have conversations? I don’t know. I think if we did, truly did, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you all right now.
However, I am tired tonight so perhaps this is nothing more than blather. Or, to quote my friend, Sir Dave, what do I know? I make all this shit up.
Thanks to Danny Ayers, I’ve now heard about CoComment a service to track your comments. Thanks to Phil at Squash, I’ve also heard about the so-called conversation index originated by Stowe Boyd.
I don’t comment in other weblogs enough to care about CoComment (and shame on me for not doing more). It will be interesting to see this in action, but for now, it’s a closed door application so I’ll withhold further comment–pun not intended.
As for this conversation index, my database shows that I have 2669 posts and 19,495 comments (no trackbacks, since my software doesn’t support trackbacks). I gather this gives me a conversation index of 7 or so comments per post. What does this mean? Beats hell out of me.