Comments are now open

Tuesday June 17th, 2025

Tags: blog, meta

I read Matthew Graybosch's post at starbreaker.org responding to David's post at Forking Mad entitled I want to comment on your blog post. I then read David's post as well, because it'd be silly to read a response and not the thing it's responding to.

David's premise is pretty straightforward: comment sections are good! It's cool to be social and get feedback and hear other people's ideas. Email isn't as good. It's too formal, and it can feel weird for only one side of the conversation to be public. I don't feel quite the same way, but I can understand where he's coming from.

I also think Matthew's perspective is perfectly reasonable and understandable. Comment sections are work. You have to do moderation. He also links to Kami's post on the subject in which, among other arguments, she points out the problematic ownership and privacy implications of relying on third-party services like komments.cloud. I totally agree. I also agree that comment sections, at their unmoderated worst, can encourage low-effort bullshit, petty bickering and obnoxious hot takes. I still think encouraging response posts and emails is the best way to achieve good conversation and connection.

But, some people like comments. They approach internet discourse differently than I do. And, I'm in the fortunate position of already having most of the pieces in place for what I think is the right way to do comments. So I decided to put theory into practice.

Now

When you click the reply button at the bottom of the post, you get a full form: no longer will you need to navigate to a new page to respond. It's just like the standard contact form,¹ except now there's a box you can check if you want your message to be a comment. Otherwise it's just a normal email.

I'll manually review and add comments to the bottom of the post. Like the guestbook, this will always be a slow and manual process, and I don't see that ever changing. Frankly, I think the idea of having an open forum where the internet can anonymously post whatever they want on my own, personal website is kind of insane. We've all seen what the internet is capable of. If someone decides they don't like me, they could flood my page with all manner of nazi manifestos or actionable threats against sitting heads of state; if the commenting system is pseudonymous,² they could make it look like I'm the one who wrote it.

Chances are good that I'll see it and delete it right away, but what if I'm too busy to look at my phone? What if I just went to bed? The abusive comment could be there for the whole world to see for 7-8 hours, which is plenty of time for interpol to get involved.

Is this likely? No, but neither is identity theft or successful phishing attempts. Using low odds as an excuse not to take basic precautions is, in my opinion, quite unwise.

Using strict whitelist-only moderation also solves the problem of low-effort, bad-faith and poorly thought-out comments. If a comment sucks, I just won't approve it. People have this notion that we have a duty to entertain any opposing viewpoint as long as it's "civil"; that as long as it's not outright hate speech, we should allow anyone to publicly speak their mind on our platforms regardless of content or quality of said mind. Well, people do have the right to publicly speak their mind: they can say whatever they want on their own website or blog. The rest of us have no obligation to listen to or acknowledge them.

Not that I'm particularly worried, mind you: with very few exceptions, every interaction I've had with the readers of this blog has been positive and constructive. I'm not expecting this to change much, but opening comments might encourage less charitable types of commenters.

Some folks might interpret this policy as "I won't allow any comment that disagrees with me", but hopefully my regular readers know that I'm quite receptive to new information and different opinions as long as the person presenting them isn't an asshole. This doesn't mean I'll entertain reasoned, level-headed arguments about why you think vaccines are bad or cigarettes are cool, but it does mean I acknowledge that I don't know everything and I want to learn.

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Comments

matt 🦝

Jun 17 2025 [01]

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Just seeing how I want comments to look, layout-wise. I think between the buttons and the footnotes is the best place for them.

And I can reply to comments the same way I do in the guestbook! ‹Matt›

David

Jun 17 2025 [02]

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Hi Matt Bee. Thanks for reading my blog post about commenting. Great that you also took time to read the views of others too. I've added this post as a reference on my own blog post. AND delighted you're experimenting with commenting on your own now.