Are we able to fix Comments?

02/15/2010 04:58 a.m. | Internet

Here are my big problems with internet comments:

• Too much Spam
• Not really providing a "conversation"
• Not enough to make a difference
• Can be very self serving
• Don't relate at all to the article topic
• Can't follow up with comments
• Showing Retweets aren't the same as comments.

Not a spammer? Aren't trying to flame someone? Read the whole article? Have a question or something to share with other readers of the same article? Then you are a good candidate to comment. But I'm guessing that eliminates too many people.

I think comments might work under a couple of conditions: The writer has vetted you as areal person with good ideas or questions. You can now have access to comment on anything. Sort of a white list. Not on the list? Then you can ask to be. But the request list could turn into a bunch of spam crap as well. Hard to avoid.

I've never really been about scalability, because I'm not sure that really high quality stuff shouldscale. Comments certainly don't scale, and even for a site as small as mine, there is way too much spam and such.

The biggest problem I have with internet comments is there is no accountability. If you have an idea I disagree with but it is well explained and well written, then I will certainly post it. But, if you want to put "nice post", "LOL", or just about anything that you see on most popular blogs, it makes me want to tear off my face and renounce the internet all together. (Has anything practical at all ever come out of Yahoo answers? Seriously.)

And this doesn't even tackle the big internet problem that still hasn't been fixed: the annoying idiots that try to ruin it for the rest of us. I'd rather not play with them at all.

I'm just as happy not having comments, because any Really Important comments will make it to me by some other means.

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