Just a bit of admin: we've now introduced RSS feeds for comments onto Read/WriteWeb. On each post you'll see a "Subscribe to comments for this post" link (just under the Comments header).

If you want to subscribe to comments for all posts, there is a single feed for that: http://www.readwriteweb.com/comments.xml

I'm hoping this makes it easier for people to follow conversations on R/WW, because over the past few months there have been some fascinating discussions. Indeed a niche community of Web technology enthusiasts is forming here. So naturally I want to encourage that! If anyone has further suggestions to improve the community aspects of R/WW, please let me know...

References for MovableType users: Niall Kennedy and Phil Ringnalda.

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!)

One of the things I admire about the web designer community is the way they all comment on each others blogs and have these wonderful back-and-forth conversations. Often you'll find 30 or more comments appended to an entry on a web designer's blog. And one of the main reasons for this is that nearly all of them have inline comments systems (and beautifully styled ones, I might add). Inline comments do promote conversations, because when folks click through to your weblog from their RSS Aggregator they'll most probably scroll down to the comments at the end of the page, which prompts them to leave a comment too, which then causes the others to respond, etc. Whereas if you have pop-up comments, you need to click on the link at the end of the page to see who's commented and what they said.

And as I wrote a couple of months ago when I first raised the topic of inline comments, it's in line with the two-way web philosophy I promote. Why not mix my content with my readers on the same page? It should also foster some sense of community - we're all mingling together, reading and writing on the one page. I almost feel like breaking into a U2 song: One page, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other, carrrry each other, One... Er, <cough>!

There's already a good conversation started up in my post from yesterday: Analysing Bloglines Subscriber Stats. Want to join in?

"...now's a good time to let us know what features you want us to add to make Bloglines better and easier.

Whoever wants to post their Top 5 list for Bloglines here, we're all ears."

I think that's a great idea, but I'd like to open it up to other web-based RSS Aggregators too. If you want to give Bloglines, Rojo, or any other web-based RSS Aggregator advice on features you want to see - here's the place to do it. I know that senior management at both Bloglines and Rojo are watching this thread, so your comments will definitely be taken on board by them. I'm sure that's true of other Aggregator companies too.

Note that for the sake of keeping this conversation focused, this is only about web-based RSS Aggregators - not desktop apps. We'll deal with the latter another time.

So please click here to give your suggestions to Bloglines, Rojo and others.

Update, 4/10/05: Keep the comments coming. 22 at this point, but it'd be good to get some more for Rojo and the other web-based aggregators.

It's nice to see that Kutano has opened up another avenue to access comments on Sidewiki. At the same time, though, we will still have to wait and see if Sidewiki turns out to be a success. Google would probably love to be able to pull in more comments through its system and be able to analyze these to improve its search engine.

For now, though, Sidewiki's audience is limited and given that most Internet users already have a multitude of ways to express their opinion about a website (comments, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, microblogs, etc.), it's hard to imagine that Sidewiki will really catch on with users.

Moderator is a simple app that does its job well. The app provides you with notifications of how many comments are waiting on your approval both inside the app and also when the app is docked in your taskbar. Moderator also gives you the option of deleting, approving, or marking a comment as spam. You can also choose to view the gravatar of a commenter and set the refresh interval at up to 60 minutes. All of this is nicely packaged in a small and clean user interface.

Moderating Comments From Your Desktop

Developed by Daniel Dura, Moderator is a nifty AIR app and WordPress plugin that allows WordPress users to moderate comments from their desktop with ease. To get started, all you will need is version 2.6+ of WordPress and the latest version of Adobe AIR. To download Moderator, the app requires you to first install the Moderator plugin into your WordPress plugins directory. Doing so provides an added layer of security for your blog. Once the plugin is installed and activated you will be presented with a download link for the Moderator AIR app. As an early release, users may encounter some kinks and quirks depending on the amount of unmoderated comments you receive on a daily basis. However, Moderator is a great app to help you keep up with your comments as the day wears on, without having to constantly refresh your WordPress dashboard.

But what if that comment is posted to FriendFeed or Digg? Now who owns it? Clearly, we have a lot less control over comments off of our web site, but should we be granted any rights to those comments at all? If the same comment had been made on the blog itself, we'd have probably looked at it as something we had full publishing rights to. Now that the comment is elsewhere, that's less clear.

Wiliams also points out that hosted comment services, such as Disqus, muddy the issue further. Blogs using that type of system are only really republishing comments made to specialized comment aggregation pages on a third party service. It's almost like publishing a feed of comments from Digg or FriendFeed. Commenters are generally given far more control over their comment when using Disqus than when using a built-in blog comment system. Systems like CoComment and Commentful that pull your comment stream into a single database similarly make things more complicated. Clearly, the idea there is that the commenter should be in full control of his or her comments.

"Since no blog platforms that I am aware of provide a mechanism for clarifying comment ownership rights, it seems to me that at best this issue is legally unclear, and at worst the site owner might only have the right to use and display the content in the very specific context in which the user placed the comment," writes Williams. "So if, for example the blog owner wanted to use the comment on another site, or to reconfigure his blog in some substantial way, that might, theoretically require the permission of the commenter."

This is an important issue, and as a commenter on Williams' blog notes, it has implications about liability as well. If I slander someone on your blog, and you're claiming ownership of my comment, where does the liability lie? What do you think? Who owns your comments? Does it matter where you leave them? We plan to sell the best comments on eBay and pocket all the profits (kidding!).

Webloggers that get hit by comment spam have one thing in common - they include their comments on the same page as their actual content. Movable Type blogs do this by default and most people who brewed their own weblog systems (like Bill and Andrew) do this too. And I have to say, it's the ideal way to present comments. I'd do it too, if it weren't for the comment spammers.

The way Radio Userland does it is to have a pop-up window just for comments. Because the comments window is highly unlikely to generate any Google juice (because it's separate from the actual weblog post), comment spammers haven't bothered to target Radio Userland with their filth. I've heard of one or two isolated cases, but that's all. So I have to say, I won't be moving any time soon to integrate comments with my weblog posts - even though scripts like this make it relatively easy.

And yes I know there are the Web equivalent of swatters and flysprays that can be used to attack comment spam - but I don't want to spend my precious time stamping out insects.

Besides, I'm kind of a puritan regarding my weblog posts. I like the idea of my writing being apart from the comments. Perhaps it's my pretentious artistic tendencies. Each weblog post deserves to stand alone on it's own merit (ok, that did sound pretentious!). What I mean is: I see each weblog post as an entity unto itself and the comments likewise.

Speaking of comments systems, I've also noticed that my website is slow to download sometimes due to Radio Userland's comments server. Specifically the comments-counting macro. This is discussed here over at Radio Userland. It's been happening too much to me lately and frankly annoying me as much as spammers do. So I decided to strip the commentCount macro out - at least for a little while to see how much difference it makes (nb: I think the Referrers counting macro also causes slow download). So for now you won't be able to see how many comments a post has on my site. This is a pain, but it'll have to do until I think of a long-term solution (or just cave in and put the macro back).

One solution I thought about was swapping my comments over to Phil Pearson's Python Community Server. I still may do this, as I've heard good things about it. Only I'm a bit nervous about the swapover process and potentially losing my old comments. Also the instructions weren't all that clear to me. Maybe someone out there can post a comment and steer me right ;-)

BackType Subscriptions sends you an e-mail with updates that you can choose to receive as they happen, daily or weekly. Subscriptions is also offered via RSS. While most blogging platforms already offer a similar service, BackType fills the gap for those that don't.

With the amount of people socializing on the Web and leaving comments across the blogosphere, online reputation management is crucial. Not keeping up means you may miss out on important conversations about you or your brand - especially when they occur in the comment sections. Just look at the recent controversy surrounding Motrin.

Monitor Comments Across the Web

BackType can monitor comments you leave, or it can monitor comments that a person you specify leaves across the Web. Brilliant if you're interested in knowing what someone is talking about online, or if you want to know which sites they're commenting on. It also offers a search function by keyword letting you see at a glance how often your keyword appears in comments, where it appears and gives you an easy way to reply.

How it works

Once you sign up for an account, BackType scans the blogosphere looking for your URL in comment forms and attributes the comment to you by placing it on your profile page.

In a nutshell, BackType:

• Provides a unique URL that you can use if you don't have your own Web site
• Aggregates all of the comments you leave across the Web
• Aggregates comments written or shared by the people you're following
• Lets you search for comments on specific topics and follow those written by the people you care about
• Offers keyword specific search so you can easily find comments that mention your industry, products, services, competitors
• Provides an alert service that tracks keywords in comments and e-mails them to you (much like Google Alerts, but for comments)
• Allows you to track comments by blog post via Subscriptions
• Has created two widgets; one displays your own comments, the other shared comments
• Is available on FriendFeed
• Supports Digg, Reddit, Intense Debate, Live Journal and Vox comments

Potential problems

Potential problems could arise if people use your name to comment, but BackType has planned for that by offering a moderation option.

While it doesn't compete directly with JS-Kit, SezWho, and Disqus as it isn't a plugin, it could be considered a competitor to Artiklz which is also focused on aggregating comments.

So if you're a blogger or just interested in being informed about conversations in the blogosphere, why not give it a shot?

Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider thought the move was a good one, writing, "Hats off to the company's web team for this smart move!" Other bloggers weren't so upbeat. While it seems that the NYT times took pains to make sure that comments from both ends of the political spectrum were represented for their main page selections -- often to one extreme or the other -- and comments were edited to fit the space, I do question the wisdom of giving reader commentary such prominence on the site's index page.

We've praised news sites for adding reader commenting as a feature to their web sites in the past, and we recently had kind words about the New York Times Facebook app. However, giving reader comments such a prominent position is dangerous. Readers of news sites (and blogs) go to those specific destinations to read news in the voice they expect -- not to see a public argument from commenters.

I would applaud an expansion of New York Times comments beyond blogs to general news stories -- I think commenting is great; it gives readers an outlet for instant response and keeps writers honest. But publishing comments on the main page, especially so prominently under the main story, seems like a bad idea. What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below (we won't publish them on the main page, though!).

This is clearly a project that Google had been working on before it released this fun, but relatively useless feature on YouTube. Right now, audio previews are restricted to the first 150 characters of a comment, but we envision that Google was working on this text-to-speech project to provide screen reader functionality for tools like Google Reader or Blogger.

The comment feature is also available in the mobile version of Google Reader.

As of now, the comments you make in Google Reader remain in Google's silo and won't be syndicated back to the original blog. It is not clear if Google will give developers access to these comments so that they can create plugins that aggregate these Google Reader comments and display them on the original post or on an aggregation service like FriendFeed. In the announcement, however, the Google Reader team stresses that it wants to give its users the ability to have private conversations.

Google has been relatively slow to add social features to Google Reader and most of the discussions around shared items now happen on other services like FriendFeed and Facebook. It will be interesting to see if users will actually use this new feature in large numbers, but it is definitely an interesting addition to Google Reader. In the announcement, Google specifically mentions that it has "much more planned for this feature," and we can't help but wonder if Google is planning to allow users to comment on any item in Google Reader (similar to the SearchWiki functionality in its search engine).

Darren Rowse calls Buy Blog Comments "one of the worst business ideas [he has] heard for a long time," and I am obliged to agree. This is not only a monumentally poor idea, but one that is potentially dangerous for the blogosphere as a whole.

Buy Blog Comments charges $.20 per comment for what they say are "quality blog comments." To write truly quality blog comments that won't be flagged by site owners as spam like the site promises one would have to find related blog posts, read them, and compose thoughtful, on-topic replies that subtly weave in a marketing message with a link that is worthwhile to readers. If we can assume that takes at least 10 minutes per comment, then this site is paying its writers probably less than a $1/hour. That makes me skeptical that the site could deliver on its promise of comments that don't look like spam. But I'll let the site speak for itself and you can judge the "quality:"

We dont use people who cant even speak english. It is important to have well written blog comments so that they wont get deleted by the blogger. All of our trained staff are currently from the USA and Canada and speak english very well.

The site is run by Jon Waraas, a 20 year old entrepreneur who in the comments of Darren Rowse's site admits that he's "just not very ethical." Waraas adds to the shadiness of an already suspicious endeavor by quoting himself on the Buy Blog Comments web site in a manner that looks like a customer testimonial. The site itself says that it specializes in selling to "blackhatters" (a term used to describe people who use search engine optimization techniques that are frowned upon by the search engines or outright against their terms of service), which is a good way to attract negative attention from Google.

As Search Engine Journal notes, there is value in comment links, but paying someone to spam blogs (or doing it yourself) is not the way to go about building backlinks.

Foaf Http 201 Alist MacManus (if it's a boy)

Note: I think 'Foaf' could be the new 'Frank'... and his school mates could nickname him 'The Foafster'!

Blogatha Validate Post MacManus (if it's a girl)

Hmmm, actually thank goodness my daughter was born before I started blogging! :-)