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     Here begins your journey into the mind of everybody's favorite asian, and I don't mean Jet Li.
What follows is the somewhat inane, mostly irrelevant, and self-important ramblings of a man on the brink of madness.
Welcome... to the Chu.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
 Disjointed Comment Communications    [L]

Rant time.

I cannot abide Disjointed Comment Communications (hereafter "DCC") on my blog. Most of you probably know what i'm talking about, although you might not have seen the official name for it - so let me enlighten you.

Disjointed Comment Communications is the act of carrying on multiple threads of conversation over 1 or more unrelated posts. Let me give you an example:

Let's say we have 2 bloggers, Alan and Bill, and a reader, Charlie.

1) Alan writes a post on his blog discussing the movie, Star Wars.
2) Bill writes a post on his blog talking about local politics.
3) Alan comments on Bill's local politics post, saying, "You're right, those Democrats are crazy!"
4) Bill replies by commenting on Alan's topmost post, which is about Star Wars, saying, "Yes, I can't stand liberals."
5) Reader Charlie reads Alan's post on Star Wars, and then Bill's following comment on liberals, and wastes several minutes trying to reconcile the two. Charlie then resigns in disgust and looks for cute girls on myspace rather than post a comment about Alan's Star Wars post.
6) Alan wonders why he gets only 1-2 comments per post and then the discussion dies. He then looks for cute girls on myspace.

As you can see, DCC is a quick way to ruin the flow of your blog, and kill any relevant discussion. I blame myspace for this.

No, seriously. Myspace's comment system does not allow you to comment on your own profile. So, if someone posts a comment like "How was your day?", you can't easily respond to them - you have to go to their profile and respond in their comments. Now, say you have 8 or so friends that do this sort of thing regularly, and the comments section of your profile becomes a gordian knot of discussion.

Many people don't seem to understand that the best way to actually communicate coherently with someone is via direct-message instead of commenting. Of course, this is counter to the purpose of being on myspace in the first place, which is to be seen by as many people as possible.

For myspace, there is no help, there is no recourse. But, my dear readers, and fellow enlightened authors, you blogspotters, wordpressers, munuvians, and yes, even xangians - we are not helpless against DCC - we can overcome!

The proper netiquette (or blogiquette, if you will) is to respond to your post's commenter as a comment on your own dang post. It's a relatively simple concept, merely keep the discussion within the proper post context.

So, please join me in my campagin to eradicate DCC. Just a few dollars cents comments a day could make a big difference.

Authors, I implore you: think of each other's readers. And my sanity.

posted by ZaijiaN @ 3/28/2006 03:10:00 PM   [13] comments  |    


Haha!

I was just discussing that on myspace! I hate that everything gets so mixed up...

Well, here's a comment!

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/28/2006 05:04:00 PM      

Bravo Mike, keep on bringing the light into the darkened places.

By Blogger ZaijiaN, at 3/28/2006 05:50:00 PM      

I suppose. I've never really been a fan of the whole comment on your own post thing...why don't you just make another post? But you are right about the disjointedness of such attempts at conversation. And myspace just sucks in general...even though I have one.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/29/2006 12:48:00 AM      

I don't like commenting on my own posts because then I get the emails telling me that I posted a comment. It's like a false sense of excitement when I open my inbox and it says I have "3 new messages" and two of them are comments from myself, to myself.

I'd rather just not post a comment.

By Blogger Joel, at 3/29/2006 08:50:00 AM      

There sure is alot of crap on this site....

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/29/2006 08:58:00 AM      

Rob: There is some merit to making another post, although my usual method is to just append/update the original if the discussion warrants it.

Joel: You know you can delete emails, right? :)

Jeff presents another problem altogether: trolls.

By Blogger ZaijiaN, at 3/29/2006 09:56:00 AM      

phil. thanks for what you said on my site. i really agree that me saying joey bear would be funny with the accent and all.

so i don't get this post at all. what is dcc again?

haha. jk.jk.

By Blogger Unknown, at 3/29/2006 01:29:00 PM      

Speaking of democrats...I saw a news article that said that more people are calling themselves democrats than republicans in a recent poll.

I wonder what that means for the next round of elections.

By Blogger Joel, at 3/29/2006 04:41:00 PM      

That republicans won't get another 4 years?

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/29/2006 10:02:00 PM      

I like pizza

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/29/2006 10:44:00 PM      

I had Rock-A-Fellas pizza last night for the first time. It was good.

By Blogger Joel, at 3/30/2006 09:27:00 AM      

you ever hear the song "Holy Diver" by Dio? it's the b...

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3/31/2006 02:30:00 PM      

this blog sure does die during the weekends...are u basically just blogging all day at work? This blog will be presented at your termination hearing.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/02/2006 01:03:00 AM      

^^^ speak up ^^^