In between my first cent and this second cent on the comment ‘controversy,’ I posted some real life news.

I think blogging, like any hobby, can help us grow.

Second cent
Let’s not get our exercise jumping to conclusions. Don’t assume. Look around you. Look at your computer. Do you think that everyone has the super-duper set-up you do? How much can you afford to fork out in time and money for your blog? Do you honestly believe everyone blogs for the same reasons you do?
Ok. Colby Cosh asks this question.

The answer is simple: who decreed that this was a conversation?

Um….I didn’t see a question to answer.

…it suffices to observe that weblog comment sections are, with vanishingly rare exceptions, either overgrown thickets of inanity or barren heaths strewn with slivers of in-group banter. I find it baffling that anyone could regret the absence of such a thing, unless he felt a compulsive, unjustified entitlement to a share in ColbyCosh.com–which is, in law and fact, a wholly owned subsidiary of the human being named Colby Cosh.

Colby was one of the first bloggers to email me and encourage me to get a domain name recently. Because, and only because of the generousity of others, I am able to continue blogging.
He was also one of the first, if not the first blogger, to link up to the new URL.

However. Colby, I strongly disagree with most of your statement. I agree that many comments sections do deteriorate. USS Clueless took his down. Little Green Footballs comments often becomes an overgrown thicket of inanity. I control the mouse….if I click into a thicket, I can click back out.
Damian Penny just put one up.
Guys like Cosh and Reynolds get 20 or 200 times the traffic most of us will ever get, and don’t have the time to give a comments section the TLC it requires.
That’s fine. I still read them. They provide me with great content for free.

Comments are interactive, they can be conversational, they often are instant gratification for the blogger and the reader. They cost money because they eat bandwidth. They take TLC. I don’t assume commenters are self-policing.
Yes, I’ve had a rare ‘entitled’ commenter, but I also have the delete button.
I haven’t used it yet, but I can and I will if I think I need to.

Anyone reading this blog knows exactly where I stand in regards to respect and common courtesy, but the oddest things can set people off. And that’s part of my point. Cyber-space wierds us out.
I get angry, frustrated and tired like any other human being, and I try very hard to remember a person put those words there. With time, and experience I’m learning to be more pro-active in blogging and commenting as opposed to re-active. I don’t assume everyone else believes or practises that.
I’m not an expert, I have some experience and strong convictions. So do many others.

Yes, colbycosh.com is owned and operated by a real human being and he is entitled to be baffled.

I’ve found that comments can teach, comments can encourage, commenters can fact check your ***, as Ken Layne says.
Comments can be, and often are ‘in-group’. And just why is that a problem?
Personally, I find them incredibly interesting. If I read a good post at another blog, I read the comments. I don’t assume every good blogger can afford them. I think that this attitude is as high-school as ‘delinking.’
My readers are smarter about most things than I am, and usually I encourage people to pipe up. There are days I don’t want or need the chatter, so I turn it off. Sometimes comments give me ideas, sometimes they influence me in negative ways.

I’ve blogged without them, I’ve blogged with them. I don’t assume every blogger has the technical knowledge, the time, the experience, the money, the personality, or the inclination to add a comment section.
Blog-lurking is how most of us make the decision to blog. It’s a bigger step than you’d think and once we start blogging, 99.9% of us built our base with links. I’ve been able to expand that base by going to comments, and by having them. For a meta-blogger like me, they are less optional than for others.

The Gospel According to Mark and ireneQ have taken a serious look at comments, so I’ll end with their two cents worth.

Update: The topic du jour…. Mark Byron and Josh Claybourn weigh in also.