![]() |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
It means:
Quote:
But seriously folks, I'm just really wondering when the "guest count" is going to stop hovering around 140 to 150. Is there really that many lurkers out there or were those numbers padded all along? Surely this is going to drop off at some point. Especially after they, if they are real, get a load of this particular subthread. |
Re: It means:
Quote:
|
Re: It means:
Quote:
|
Re: It means:
Quote:
|
Trolling all bots
Quote:
011011000110110000100000011110010110111101110101 001000000110001001101111011101000111001100100001 |
Re: Trolling all bots
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Not to be contrary, look, but this approach is rather inelegant.
I have now posted in Disqus. It looks to me like the situation is as follows. Under vbulletin, there was the commenting world and the diavlog world. The two things were closely related but distinct, and they were related in a nonhierarchical way. Often the commenters thought that their discussions were more interesting than the diavlogs, and often they were. In the new dispensation, comments are clearly subordinate to the diavlogs and have no life independent of the diavlogs. Bob, you are simply wrong to place so much importance upon the comments appearing below the video window. I can see why one might think that this was terribly important from the point of view of improving traffic to the site, but I think it's a business error. A better approach, in my view, would be simply to point users to the user forum, which would have an independent existence. I recently had occasion to read a lot of user comments at the NYT site, comments that were provoked by Thomas Friedman's recent column about the Israel lobby. The comments were fine, indiscernibly different from those here. I think everything that has ever been said about US-Israel relations and about Israel's history was said in the comments. But the format of the comments at the NYT site is not conducive to creating a commenting community, and it does not need to be. It's a mistake to conclude anything from what works for comments sections in print media or at other sites that are not presenting "televised" dialogues between two people. By "what works," I mean what works to increase demand for the underlying content. In any case, I don't see how there can be a commenting community in which there are actual social relations among commenters under Disqus as now implemented at bhtv, unless I am missing something. It is quite clear that there is a master-slave relationship between diavlog and comments in the new regime, and that simply cannot work in even the intermediate term. |
Thumbs up to this.
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
Bob may want to have comments showing under the videos to show something about what kind of people are interested in those discussions. But beyond that, I don't think that the community part of the deal has much profitability for Bob. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
I think he wants the commentary to reflect, and more importantly, display a highbrow and ideologically diverse viewership, and this format encourages us riffraff to riff here. Present company not included, of course. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: Thumbs up to this.
Quote:
When I think about it, it's like the new commenters at Disqus are puppies who don't have preconceptions about 'how things should be.' We're like loyal old dogs, and Bob cares, but he can't do much more than leave this site open. Honestly, I think Bob should probably just let us post as much as we want about current diavlogs (without linking from there to here), and little by little, we'll probably be drawn into Disqus. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
Quote:
Bheads was failing as a business. It was unsustainable, and now Bob and the new non-profit are trying something new. I don't really get how a non-profit disentangles itself from Bob's job at the Atlantic, but that's really off-topic. If I were marketing Blogginheads 2.0, I'd say something clever about synergies, but I'm not, so I won't. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
So perhaps an intermediate term is possible. We can still use this forum, as long as it exists, to talk about topics tangentially related to the diavlogs, as well as all the other unrelated topics that were of no interest in any case to anyone but the regular commenters. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
It's not a business error, ipso facto. But Bob's presumption is that intelligent comments directly below the video window will draw additional viewers. So I just question whether this is true. If there were some well-known commenter who was not using a pseudonym and who rushed to comment as soon as a diavlog was posted, OK, I can see that that is an attraction. I don't see how the comments of unknown posters, comments which may or may not be intelligent, are going to draw additional viewers. On the other hand, the existence of a dedicated commenting community assuredly leads to some marginal "buzz." I know that I have mentioned bhtv to anyone I thought might conceivably be interested. And I did link to bhtv on occasion in my limited travels on the Web.
I'm not expecting bhtv to spend money on a user forum that does not pay for itself. I do question the business logic of the "below the video window" fixation. The vbulletin forum just looks considerably more serious and obviously allows for more serious commentary than does Disqus. I can't see myself writing short essays in Disqus, as I often did under vbulletin. I will myself look for a viable and inexpensive independent alternative, but I am in transit for the next few weeks, I can't do it now. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_eU0Q5KAVbs...artSmalley.jpg |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
A good time will be had by all. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
If vBulletin was free, the way say Wordpress blogs are, I could see some of us setting up a blog about bhtv where we could continue in our old ways. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
However, as you can see by the current traffic, the idea of a blog about bhtv being anything like bhtv was is grasping at straws. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
I find myself hesitating to write anything over there. It's plainly tiring to have so many limitations and know in advance that an interesting conversation is unlikely to follow. So it takes three times as much work to put a post together, especially if you want to include links. And the anticipation of the experience being rewarding is pretty much minimal or gone. For every ten posts that come up to my mind writing, I may write one. But, as you said, as long as that first page under the video is filled with something, it may be sufficient for whatever purposes Bob has. And where are the hundreds of new commenters writing their comments? I haven't seen but a couple of new names, which may very well be known comemnters from here with a different handle. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
You have seen the SNL bits, right? Or are you just running with Bill O'reilly's mean spirited caricature of the senator from Minnesota? |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Well, being a Sunday and being so cold outside, and with a topic that seemed to be poorly defended on one side, I decided to post quite a bit over there. I used every opportunity to make it clear that I hate disqus and that it limits possibilities. But I did want to participate, give it a try, contribute as a way of thanking for all the good talks that we were able to listen to and discuss in the past. Gratitude mostly. And also an honest attempt to see how much I could adapt.
I don't see it happening. During the week I won't be able to keep refreshing the page and scanning up and down to see new posts. And the narrowness of the columns is so unappealing! It fragments text and interrupts the flow of sentences and paragraphs. It stinks. Disq sucks. Disqusting. Discuss disqus. Me disqusta. http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/4/4_14_6.gif |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/8679#comment-407535643 Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
badhat said:
Quote:
I don't think so highly of myself, but I do hold badhat in very low esteem. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
;-) |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
The format is such that ongoing conversations about past diavlogs won't happen. The most recent one will get some feedback until the next one comes (or soon thereafter). With fewer diavlogs and the desire that all get comments, I strongly believe this is a benefit in the eyes of those who run the site. It also makes meaningful discussion unlikely to occur. |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
As far as this forum and our satisfaction going forward, I think it's worth talking about what -- given the comments on the diavlog being what many of us consider unsatisfactory -- could make it better. I think I'd still enjoy this forum if we could use it for the kinds of real discussions that were sparked by the diavlogs but not directly responding to them, plus the misc topics that have always been here. It might be nice if diavlogs could be talked about here after a week or two, also, as the current set up means there's no point in commenting after several days, no one will read or respond. (This is my sense of how all comments on blog posts and news articles, etc., work, and that's what our comments on the site now are.) In addition to this, we'd need some way to let people on the main site know about this one. I know I may be being too optimistic here, but other ideas of what might allow this part of the forum to remain somewhat vital? |
Re: An Important Note to Our Valued Commenters from Bob
Quote:
|
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 07:44 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2021, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.