Pop Quiz: Comments
More tinkering. Last night I made the header and footer fixed width, evened up the right-hand column's width in relation to the left column, added more white space to the main content area, and made various other changes to the CSS. I'm much happier with the layout now - it looks more balanced and not so cluttered. But I'd be interested in hearing some feedback, especially if things look funny in your web browser of choice.
Pop Quiz
I don't have enough readers to do quizzes, but if you are here reading this - would you mind giving me a YES or a NO to this question:
Should I append comments to the end of each post, rather than my current practice of keeping comments separate in a pop-up box?
There's really no excuse for me not to append comments onto the end of each post, as Movable Type has ways of keeping out those dastardly spammers. It'd be keeping with my Two-Way Web principles to allow it, because it encourages reader/writer conversations. On the other hand I don't get very many comments, compared to some other bloggers who interact with their readers a lot, so maybe the status quo pop-up box is sufficient. Hmmm, what do you think? (perhaps an ironical question, given my previous statement!)
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Here's my answer:
It depends.
Here's my suggestion:
A page that has just one post on it should have comments inlined. A page with more than one post on it should have the comments in a pop-up box, or should just have a link to per-post pages.
Here's the rationale:
A person who visits your website at the top level with a browser can read all your content, and based on the post content, decided if the comments are worth reading and/or if they want to contribute a comment. This is a site-centric model of user behavior.
A person who typically uses an RSS feed gets to see all your content on the post - when they click through to the post, it is probably because they want to read or write comments - in which case it is to your advantage to display them inline.
Here's my disclaimer:
I'd like to say I knew this from experience, but I don't.
Posted by: Andrew | May 10, 2004 6:57 PM
I prefer integrated comments. Pop-up comments seem like a vestige of Radio. And as you said, integrating the comments seems more in line with the theme of read/write.
Love the blog, and kudos on the new design. Read/Write Web is the sort of blog I'd like to keep myself, once I get off my lazy butt and do it. Just switched from TypePad to Blosxom myself, and hoping it inspires me to blog more regularly.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Siegal | May 10, 2004 7:00 PM
Well that's a good start! 2 comments is twice my average ;-)
Andrew, nice analysis. And yep I was thinking of appending comments to Permalinked posts only (rather than eg on a date archive page, or the index).
Mark, thanks for your feedback and best of luck with your blog!
Cheers,
Posted by: Richard MacManus | May 10, 2004 7:18 PM
Comments inline with posts - best for conversations, probably better for search engines, feed subscribers, archiving, maintenance (1 page is easier to maintain)
Avoid popups.
Posted by: Joseph Lindsay | May 11, 2004 12:57 AM
I agree with Andrew. However, at the moment people clicking through from your RSS feed (like I've just done) don't actually get taken to the individual post, they get the main http://www.readwriteweb.com/ (at least that's what happens with nntp//rss)
Posted by: Adrian McEwen | May 11, 2004 1:03 AM
Thanks Joseph and Adrian, I appreciate your thoughts.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | May 11, 2004 4:51 AM
Richard, I'm in the 'inline' group. If you can keep the spammers at bay, then it definitely helps with the read/write aesthetic you've got going on. Nice redesign btw. lookin' good!
Posted by: liam | May 12, 2004 12:27 PM
Inline in case - one post per page + spam protection, otherwise pop-up.
And - did you change Radio into something else and I missed the announcement or you found a way to change it so much?
Posted by: Lilia | May 13, 2004 1:56 PM
Sorry, found the announcement :)
Posted by: Lilia | May 13, 2004 1:57 PM
Thanks everyone for your comments. The unanimous decision seems to be for Inline Comments, so I will work at getting that enabled over the next couple of weeks.
Cheers,
Posted by: Richard MacManus | May 13, 2004 3:06 PM