Academic

Some blogs that I follow, like Althouse and Volokh, have very active comment discussions, while other popular lawprof blogs, such as TaxProf Blog, Concurring Opinions, Prawfsblawg, and The Glom generate fewer comments. Sometimes when I read nasty comments sections on other blogs or newspapers, I wonder why they don't follow Brian Leiter's usual practice of keeping comments closed.

On the other hand, a really good comments section, like the one at Fred Wilson's A VC blog, often contains interesting and useful contributions. I suspect that comment quality depends to a large extent on the norms encouraged and allowed by the bloggers. Fred recently posted on Why Comments Matter, and one of his commenters observed, "There is a general tendency for everyone in a community to adopt a common discourse.... [H]ere, through your engagement and restraint, you've taught everyone to be thoughtful and civil; it's one of the only places on the Internet where that happens on such a broad scale, which is why we all come."

In several behind-the-scenes discussions, all of the bloggers here have expressed an interest in developing a more vibrant blog community. Perhaps we are not as solicitous of comments as we should be, but we agree with Fred Wilson that one reason comments matter is that we learn from our readers. And, of course, readers can learn from each other.

How to develop such a community? First things first: I hereby publicly solicit your thoughtful, civil comments to anything posted on The Glom. As noted in our blog policies, "We enjoy honest and intelligent feedback. We do not enjoy profanity or vulgarity, inflammatory remarks, ad hominem attacks, or marketing."

To facilitate the exchange of ideas in the comments sections, I have installed a new comment system called Disqus, which is on display for the first time on the Glom in this post. You can see how it works with lots of comments over on Fred Wilson's blog.

Disqus seems like an improvement over Typepad's embedded comment system. Disqus allows for replies to comments (threading), and you can indicate that you "Like" a comment (a la Facebook) or, if a comment is offensive, you can "Report" that comment to me. The "More" button provides a permalink to the comment, and it gives you access to the commenter's profile, which includes other comments by the same person. But the big feature is that you can log into the comments under one of your social networking identities, so your names are linked to Disqus, Twitter, Facebook, their blog, etc. Whatever you choose. This authentication feature is designed to invite the formation of a community.

Will technology make a difference? Only on the margins, I suspect, but I am willing to experiment ...

UPDATE: Speaking of technology, I figured out how to get the comments working, but I haven't yet figured out how to display the number of comments on the main page. But that's coming, if it's possible under Disqus.

UPDATE2: Another issue is that we have long displayed "Recent Comments" in our sidebar, but that function is dependent on Typepad. I will investigate the possibility of providing that feature through Disqus.