Simon Willison’s Weblog

Originally, I had thought of implementing such a feature as well on my own blog. It sounds like such an easy option to implement, and such a useful idea for all. Then I read a piece by Joel from JoelOnSoftware, and reconsidered the entire idea. The social dynamic change that (can) occur(s) is drastic. Read for yourself at: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCom munitieswithSo.html

Dan Kalowsky - 22nd April 2003 00:14 - #

I'd read that piece and it has some excellent ideas but I don't think it applies in this case. With a forum you want people to keep coming back and seeing other content so an email notification mechanism could be damaging, but the comments on a blog are more of a mechanism for you to recieve feedback on your entries than the focal point of a site. Like Keith, I comment on lots of blogs and it's very easy to forget to check back later and see if someone has replied to a comment (especially if it's on a blog I don't visit very often).

Simon Willison - 22nd April 2003 00:21 - #

How will you recognize the visitors when they come back to see the new posts? You will need to do so, because you want to delete the mail-has-been-send-flag. Do you plan to use a cookie or what?

Pepino - 22nd April 2003 00:55 - #

That can be included in the URL that they click on from the email:

http://simon.incutio.com/emailalert?as9da97d3

The above URL would redirect them to the page with the comments on, and reset the "do not email me, I haven't been back to the site" flag in the database record that records their initial request for email alerts.

Simon Willison - 22nd April 2003 12:22 - #

Dan Sugalski, of Parrot development fame, has an entry on RSS/notification. It's loosely related to this post, in a "let me know when something I care about happens" sort of way. http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/archives/000159.htm l To me, identity is the central missing piece in a more useful collab architecture.

Jeremy Dunck - 22nd April 2003 17:35 - #

I am apparently dumb enough to really need preview. That (hopefully) shoulda been:

Dan Sugalski, of Parrot development fame, has an entry on RSS/notification.

It's loosely related to this post, in a "let me know when something I care about happens" sort of way.

To me, identity is the central missing piece in a more useful collab architecture.

Jeremy Dunck - 22nd April 2003 17:37 - #

Sorry for the delay in response, but here goes...

The use of RSS already gives a reader little to no incentive to actually visit the site. After all, you can get all the information you need/want via the RSS feed, while providing you the poster with little knowledge as to what pieces have been of interest to the readers. Debates on this keeping the quality of comments high (and quantity low) can be left for another day. But in either case the barrier to entry in having a comment added is now set to a moderate level of difficulty. A reader will now have to open a web browser, goto the link, wait for it to load, read any other (possible) comments, and then commit theirs.

Adding in comment notification will essentially raise the reader comment barrier further providing even less of an incentive to visit and interact with the blog. Remember that with each visit while a reader may have a passing interest in an alternative post, but not enough to justify committing a comment, they have already entered the site bypassing a major portion of the reader-comment barrier. If they notice others have commented on a passing topic, read these comments, form an opinion, and decide that they should add their own opinion they have now continued to provide feedback and a place within the readership.

This partially revolves around my dislike and like on the concept of Trackback's, but again I'll save those neurons for another day.

The end result really is, what was your original purpose for this blog? Did you design this blog to get feedback on new ideas that you are thinking or reading about? Did you implement this blog as a system to keep notes on projects you've done (and how) and tidbits of knowledge that you might find useful later? Or was this designed to be an experiment in content creation and design for you to work with? Each purpose above will have different needs and behaviors. Depending upon the behavior desired, everything I've posted in this comment may be useful, or it might not.

Dan Kalowsky - 26th April 2003 15:57 - #

Wow sorry about the triple posting there. The wireless connection kept timing out... you can delete two of those.

Dan Kalowsky - 26th April 2003 16:40 - #

Adding in comment notification will essentially raise the reader comment barrier further providing even less of an incentive to visit and interact with the blog.

On the contrary, I think it's more likely to liven up a discussion. If you get something to not only remind you to check the site, but which guarantees that there's new content there, you're far more likely to revisit the site to see what's been said. Particularly because you've already expressed interest in the topic of discussion by commenting and subscribing to the post.

Keith - 28th April 2003 22:12 - #