When Is A Blog Not A Blog?
When it doesn’t have any comments.
Nadine Dorries has turned off the comment facility on her blog, saying:
Please don’t send any more comments - It’s a time thing, I don’t have any.
I have to rely on the patience of others to read and post the comments for me. I am never in front of a computer for more than a couple of minutes at a time and this has now made reading the comments before they are posted impossible.
Knowing that there are comments on my site which I may not even have had time to see, makes me uncomfortable…
Well, she’s utterly wrong to do so. A blog is a conversation. Without the comments, it’s nothing more than a speech. That is makes her “uncomfortable” not to have seen the comments on her blog is no argument for turning them off. It is the very nature of the internet!
She ends the announcement with the comment:
Yet without comments, it’s not a blog. Simple as that. Without comments it is not a blog and you are not a blogger. The ability to comment is the very lifeblood of a blog, without it it is nothing really. A recipe missing a vital ingredient, a perfume without any scent - pretty damn pointless.
Without comments, is it - can it be - a blog? Short answer: no.
Image: Nadine Dorries
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Of course it can still be a blog. To my mind, a blog is just a space to share your own views with people. Whether you want your views debated is entirely up to the author, surely?
The other point being that another part of blogging is basing your own posts on what other bloggers have said. Norman Geras doesn’t allow comments, for instance, yet still prompts quite a lot of discussion elsewhere in the ’sphere.
LFAT, doesn’t the act of posting a blog entry imply the author’s desire to have some form of response?
I have mixed feelings about this. Given the widespread use of readers, there are significantly less comments on blogs. As Ian mentions, what the author says is often debated in other blogs and is picked up by Google or Technorati. This lady doesn’t sound to serious about her blog all the same. THat said, I have not read it and don’t know who she is.