Why Amygdala doesn’t have commenters
Addressed to the owner of Amygdala. In response to this comments thread.
If you want me to speculate about why you don’t have more commenters, Gary, I can. (And if you don’t, well, you can stop reading now.) You write very a lot of very long pieces. Many people don’t like to read blogs that have over a certain number of average words a day, because it takes too much time to keep up with it all. (Many of these people don’t read very fast.) You could consider splitting your blog into different blogs for different purposes. Political posts on one blog, sci fi and comics posts on another. Something like that. That way people won’t have to make the effort to skip posts they’re not interested in, (and believe me when I say that this has a huge effect—most people don’t have good filtering skills, and will stop reading a blog regularly sooner than skip uninteresting posts) because you’ll already have done that. You could consider cutting down on the word count. Editing posts down more, making them more pithy.
In many posts, you’re basically quoting other people. Quotes necessarily involve a switch in voice and style and context, and so reading them is much harder than reading a single voice throughout a post. The more quotes you include, the harder your posts are to read.
Your posts tend to be “expert” type posts. They show that you have a really large amount of knowledge about what you write about. They often require a certain amount of knowledge about those topics to understand and enjoy. People who don’t feel as knowledgable as they think you see yourself will almost never comment on this type of post. (If they think they know as much as you, but think that you think you know more, they won’t comment.) People who don’t want to make the mental effort to parse large numbers of details in order to understand your posts well enough to comment on them (even if they would be able to, and would have something to say) won’t do so. (This is the reason my blog doesn’t get many comments.)
Your writing isn’t very entertaining. A lot of it is just cursory comments on stuff that you’ve read. A lot of the value you provide is in linking to the stuff in the first place, and while that’s quite valuable, it’s not something that draws a big following, or a lot of comments. (In fact, I imagine more blog owners read you than do people who only comment, since you’re a good content filter to use for material for others.) But most of what people like in blogs is commentary—opinion, argumentation, conversation. Your writing lacks color, stylistic variety, metaphor, and narrative flow that engages the reader. (Yes, that is essential to good non-fiction.)
To the extent that people are drawn to blogs because of the owner’s persona, yours stinks. When you refer to your personal life, it’s always in a negative or apologetic way. This repels people. When you provide people insights into your life, they should always be calculated to endear people to you.
Oh, and you require registration for comments.
That probably covers most of it.
July 6th, 2006 at 7:10
For what it’s worth, I think this is a pretty good summary of the problems.
Note that two of the stylistic tendencies reinforce each other; Amygdala is set up as an expert blog, with lots of long quotes and tons of links and very little commentary. It’s a very high barrier to entry. I’m in no position to niggle over the details of 60 linked news articles; there is very little opinion to disagree with or challenge. And the persona is such that if I were to comment and say something incorrect or imperfectly researched, I wouldn’t receive a gracious reception, but probably a list of a) more links and a combination of b) complaining that no one’s contributing to Amygdala and c) the most uncharitable reading of whatever I said. God forbid I use the generic ‘you.’
The basic feeling: if I comment on the posts, I’m going to get yelled at. I might be wrong, but first I’d have to register.
The thing is, I think Amygdala is quite good for what it is. It’s a great place to go and read links to interesting articles, and I know whatever is there has been reasonably well researched. But it’s not the sort of place where one goes to comment.
Obsidian Wings is probably closest in style to what Amygdala could emulate. And it gets lots of comments while being well researched, in part because the bloggers are willing to be wrong. (hilzoy’s piece on whether Lieberman counts as a Democrat/democrat. Opines that he’s neither, lots of people disagree, and there ya go.)
July 6th, 2006 at 8:07
In many posts, you’re basically quoting other people. Quotes necessarily involve a switch in voice and style and context, and so reading them is much harder than reading a single voice throughout a post. The more quotes you include, the harder your posts are to read.
This, certainly. I have a tendency to look at the quote only rather than reading the actual post — I end up knowing what was pointed at rather than what Gary said about it.
Also, and goodness only knows what to do about it, the blog seems buggier than average from a software point of view. I’ve almost stopped trying to comment there, not because it’s impossible; I’ve been able to comment about 2/3 of the time I’ve tried, but it’s just annoying thinking of something to say and then having it disappear into the ether.
July 6th, 2006 at 9:13
I’ve never seen a Blogspot blog that I enjoyed commenting on, from an ease-of-use point of view. Then again, I’ve never seen my comments disappear either, FWIW. It could be a problem unique to Gary’s particular blog, but given that you can’t modify the commenting mechanism much at all, it doesn’t seem likely.