This is a shameful navel gazing post about blawging and its love/hate relationship with other forms of social media. If it’s not of interest, don’t waste your time reading any further.

Following a post yesterday, there were a bunch of comments on twitter. I responded as I typically do, with my not-quite-subtle point that comments about a post would be better made in the comments to the post rather than twitter. There may also be comments on Facebook or any other social media format, but since I don’t bother with those, I wouldn’t know.

The reaction was also typical: it’s not up to me to dictate where others choose to comment. True. I can’t demand that anybody do as I want and leave their comments here rather than elsewhere, but that really isn’t the point.  It’s not about my dictating anything to anyone, but rather about my asking others who have made a choice to engage in a discussion to talk in the same room.

Blawg posts exist here. People who read the posts read them here. If they give rise to something worthy of their interest, that’s great, as one of the most valuable aspects of blawging is to engender discussion. But what’s the point in having a discussion about something here when the discussion is happening somewhere else?  It means that none of the people who read the post here know about the discussion, join in the discussion, learn from the discussion or even think about the discussion.

As my friend,  Nino Pribetic noted, it’s not as if the posts here are entirely unrelated to twitter. I use a feed that automatically twits a new post so that anyone who cares to know that I’ve written something will know about it and have a link available to read it.  He’s correct, that by using this automatic feed, I’ve voluntarily included twitter in the realm of places where my posts can be found.  Does this make it my fault? Perhaps, or at least to the extent I’ve inserted a different medium into the mix, I have no cause to complain.

Nino also suggested that there might be an element of comment trolling involved, meaning that my purpose was to seek more comment to the post.  He’s right and wrong. I don’t get paid any extra based on the number of comments (this is a snarky remark, since I don’t get paid at all for blawging), but then, there is an aspect of feedback that makes doing this more interesting most of the time. So the more thoughtful comments on the blawg, the more fun it is for me. 

The point is that anyone who feels that something written here is worthy of comment would do well for themselves and any other readers to have the discussion here, where the post exists.  To discuss it on twitter is to exclude other readers, to deny them your thoughts. Sure, the person’s twitter followers will see their twit, and perhaps they too will have read the post, but other readers won’t.  The best that can come of it is a mini discussion off to the side somewhere, where no other reader is able to hear.

And then, of course, there is the question of whether twitter, with its 140 character limit, is really an appropriate format to discuss much of anything. But given that it happens anyway, my guess is that ship has sailed.  Half the twits I read make no sense to me as people try to jam in what might be a comprehensible idea by leaving out as many words as possible and truncating their thoughts to the point of gibberish. Or maybe I just don’t get the shorthand.

In any event, my hope is to explain why I ask that comments to a post be left as comments here rather than elsewhere.  No, I can’t stop anyone from saying or doing anything they please, but I don’t have to encourage or enable it either.  And if you can bear the nightmarish captcha, do me a favor and leave your comment here. Is it too much of me to ask?