January 06, 2005
CommentBlogging Ahead of My Time?
For about six months, I’ve been doing something on the bleeding edge without realizing it, and in fact, it never even occurred to me that others might find the idea useful. Now it seems to be catching on (no thanks to me), so I guess I might as well bring some more attention it now.
As I mentioned earlier, I do write quite a few comments on other blogs (although I’m nowhere near as prolific or knowledgeable or insightful as that ubiquitous uber-commenter, Praktike). Now, blog comment systems are ridiculously primitive compared to message board technology in that most blogs don’t notify you when there are replies to your comments, so you need to check back yourself. If you have quite a few comments on active threads, it’s pretty hard to remember them all.
I also find that some of my comments are great jumping off points for full-blown blog posts. For example, my lengthy On Marriage essay started off as a short comment at Winds of Change. My helluva long piece about Bush included some material that I first articulated in a comment thread about Richard Clarke at Sebastian Holsclaw’s blog (you might be surprised to know that Clarke was also the impetus behind my The Message, Not the Messenger post). And of course I even recently blatantly reposted pieces of a comment thread I participated in at Djerejian’s The Belgravia Dispatch.
Anyway, suffice to say that it’s pretty handy for me to keep track of my comments for future reference. Intially, I used a text file into which I copied and pasted the URLs of all the blogposts on which I’d commented. Well, about six months ago, it occurred to me to use del.icio.us instead.
Let me explain del.icio.us. It’s a social bookmarking managing service that Buzz had introduced to me at a blogger meetup a while back. It’s still in beta, but it’s already very useful and rather easy to use. You can read more about it here, but in short, it’s a free online service where you can store bookmarks, categorize them with keywords (called “tags”), and search through them, etc. Since you can apply multiple tags to any item, it’s much more flexible than folders and easier to find things later (and they seem to be all the rage, try Googling folksonomies).
The social aspect is you can see lists of who else has bookmarked the same items, see which ones are the most popular, view all the bookmarks of other users (mine are here), and even subscribe to an RSS feed of practically any page on del.icio.us (here’s the feed for my bookmarks, such as it is). The web-based interface is a bit clunky, but there are tools available to make it a bit smoother, such as Buzz’s own open source Cocoal.icio.us for Mac OS X.
While the social aspect is quite interesting (and it’s quite satisfying to see something you’ve posted get picked up by other del.icio.us users), the bookmark management alone is an indispensible way for me to manage all the information I’ve gathered so that I can link to it later. What’s especially handy to me is that it’s accessible from my work computer, my home desktop, and my iBook (not to imply that I ever surf the web at work, since that would be wasting company time, and I would never do that).
And six months ago, it occurred to me to use del.icio.us to keep track of my comments on other blogs. Not only was this useful for my own personal use, but I’m also a bit too proud of my debating skills, so I have to admit that the public, social aspect of it did appeal to me as well (although I do rather doubt anybody actually follows my comments). It didn’t occur to me that this was anything special. For one, I figured I was unusual in wanting to keep track of these things. I figured most other people just participate in one comment thread at a time, and wouldn’t ever want to refer back to them after the thread is over.
Well, I should have realized otherwise. Mike from mtl3p recently stumbled upon the practice independently, and as he actually has a readership, others followed suit, and it seems like the practice is taking off (and see my comment below on why the choice of “myComments” as the tag for these instead of just “comments”). Sébastien Paquet has some interesting thoughts on the new trend:
This is obviously handy as a personal trail of places you’ve been, which makes it easy for you to revisit comment threads you’re participating in. In addition, it can be of use to others (1) as a way of being aware of things you found interesting enough to comment on, and (2) as a way of verifying that you were indeed the person who posted such-or-such comment under your name.
Paquet also points out it works anywhere that uses HTTP, including message boards. Plus, it’s useful for commenters who don’t have their own blogs. For instance, one of my favorite commenters at Dan Drezner’s blog is Zathras, but he doesn’t seem to have a blog, so I have no easy way of finding anything else he might have written. Furthermore, if you use it to put your recent comments on your sidebar, it can double as a dynamic blogroll. In fact, that sounds like something that everybody will be doing in a few months. See an example of this at mtl3p, on the sidebar as “My Comments Elsewhere” (Update 2/7/05: and I’ve now added it to my own sidebar on the main page).
Of course, Mike deserves all the credit for being the trendsetter. He’s the one who ran with the idea (he’s specifically excited about the potential for this to become a new form of blogging — CommentBlogging, as it were) and singlehandedly kickstarted the whole trend. As for me, I suppose I was merely ahead of my time. Mike’s publicly noted in several cases that I’d been doing it longer, so I can’t even be indignant.
Not that I would be, as I’m really just tickled by the whole thing. And as I commented on Mike’s blog (and posted to del.icio.us, of course):
Naw, I still don’t think I really started it. Maybe I just merely happened to be the first one to use “myComments” as the tag…. But if I’m wrong, I suppose I wouldn’t mind having that on my headstone (or Wikipedia entry). :)
Not exactly what I had in mind for the extent of my contribution to humanity, but ya can’t be picky.
Indeed.
Oh wait, am I allowed to say that about something I said myself?
Update 1/14/05
Wow, fling93 gets results from both Praktike and Nadezhda. Furthermore, Praktike mentions that Technorati’s now embracing tags, combining tags from Flickr (a photo-sharing community I joined only a couple of days ago), del.icio.us, and now blog posts (using the post’s category as a tag). Here’s their primer on the new feature. I suspect things are going to get really exciting.
Looks like there aren’t any blog posts using the myComments tag, so let’s see if I can rectify that… Well, I guess not.
Update 4/13/05
I tried convincing Zathras to track his comments this way, but to no avail, so I started tracking them myself whenever I ran across them. Better yet, Zathras, aka Joseph Britt, is now guest blogging at Belgravia Dispatch filling in for Greg Djerejian, who’s taking a well-deserved break. Do check it out!
January 06, 2005 01:38 AM in Blogging, Technology | PermalinkWeblog: mtl3p
Excerpt: Fling writes a fun, clear entry telling his peeps about commentlogging, and Martin led me to http://del.icio.us/tag/mesCommentaires and came up with a solution to the problem I brought up of how to archive two comments on delicious if they are...
Tracked: January 6, 2005 06:45 PM Exciting New Feature!
Weblog: Liberals Against Terrorism
Excerpt:
Pardon the navel-gazing and nerdery that follows.
Prompted by one of my earliest commenters, fling93, I've set up a
Tracked: January 14, 2005 09:54 AM The Emerging Information Market - on reputation, user tastes, tagging
Weblog: CTG info-napsterizer
Excerpt: I clipped the little item below because it suggests one way to handle a key element -- reputation -- in a model of the blogosphere I've got in my head. The following are first musings, so it needs lots of refinement, and doesn't have any links. (Does t...
Tracked: January 25, 2005 01:25 AM
That’s a cool idea. I’d like to try it myself but I’m afraid I’d get into another time suck trying to branch out my comment tree as much as possible. I’m a sucker for new technology.
Posted by brayden at 01/06/05, 06:48 AM (link)Well, it certainly can be a time suckage, but like any form of information organization, I think it personally saves me time overall in not having to scrounge around, looking for that really good comment I knew I already wrote somewhere on the topic.
Posted by fling93 at 01/06/05, 11:36 AM (link)Yay Fling! Nicely written article btw. Good summation. Did you read
http://mtl3p.ilesansfil.org/blog/archives/2005/01/05/delicious_blog.html
It’s true, I thought your recursive comments were pretty hysterical. Set up your commentblog already, I think you’re style of writing in the extended field is the way to go (rather than cutting and pasting the actual comment).
Posted by mtl3p at 01/06/05, 11:58 AM (link)I’d noticed it, but hadn’t yet thought of what to say in reaction. I’ll be sure to come up with something.
Okay, there I did.
Posted by fling93 at 01/06/05, 12:18 PM (link)Oh, and I use the extended field the same way for myComments and other bookmarks. Most of the time I write something short. Once in a while I try to copy and paste something from the actual text, but I often end up having to trim it to make it fit, which generally makes this approach even more work than just writing a short summary.
Posted by fling93 at 01/06/05, 12:39 PM (link)Well, no, I don’t think so. For me to have been a true visionary, I would have had to actually envision the idea being used by everybody and changing the world. And I didn’t. I figured it would only be useful to me.
But I’m glad you like the idea, even if that proves me even more wrong. :)
Posted by fling93 at 01/06/05, 02:53 PM (link)OK, I’m coming around on this, having had my fun with my own de.licio.us so far.
BTW, check out some of the links regarding Technorati’s embrace of tags. The key would be to integrate your comments into the taxonomical framework you use on your own blog!
Posted by praktike at 01/14/05, 09:19 AM (link)Oh, and check this out, too. You win, but I may have just caught us in an infinite recursive loop, thereby rending a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum.
Posted by praktike at 01/14/05, 09:28 AM (link)ubiquitous uber-commenter praktike: OK, I’m coming around on this
Wow, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever gotten results from anybody or anything! And I see that I’ve talked Zathras into at least opening a del.icio.us account (alas, no posts so far). Uh oh, now I’m going to be even more unbearably egotistical!
And yeah, that Technorati stuff sounds very promising.
but I may have just caught us in an infinite recursive loop, thereby rending a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum.
Oh, that’s nothing compared to my del.icio.us posts to keep track of my comments on blog posts that talk about how to use del.icio.us to keep track of comments on blog posts…
Anyway, assuming we survive this cataclysm, I hope you find it useful, and I’m looking forward to following what you come up with!
Posted by fling93 at 01/14/05, 10:55 AM (link)Hey fling — I’ve been so busy playing with del.icio.us I hadn’t come back to give you a big wet sloppy kiss for steering me to the wonders of their system. And now with the Techocrati linkup just announced, whoa nelly!
See the breathless summary of my current excursion into the wonderful world of meta tools, aggregators, feeds etc. over at LAT. Now all I need are RSS for the comments on the 3 blogs I write on plus the LAT wiki. At the pace of all these new developments, I’d wager it’s about another 72 hours away. Ah, maybe a bit longer cause it depends on my blogging software in part, not just some RSS and template futzing with the external tools like del.icio.us.
BTW my main tag url is del.icio.us/nadezhda, and the new comments section will be de…/nad../comments, per your example.
This comment on your blog will have pride of place as first entry.
Brave new world, and thanks again!
Posted by nadezhda at 01/14/05, 11:46 AM (link)You should take a look-see at the conversation we’ve got brewing over on LAT. Good stuff.
Posted by praktike at 01/14/05, 11:50 AM (link)By the way, I should mention that Mike from mtl3p makes a good argument for everybody using the same tag for their comments. This allows people to see everybody else’s comments — although I’m sure praktike will soon dominate it. :)
Mike suggested “myComments” (or “mycomments”, as I don’t think del.icio.us cares about case sensitivity for tags) to distinguish this from all the geeky links about comments and discussing comment systems. Which was pretty much the same reason I chose it myself.
Never fear, you can easily rename tags if you go to your “settings” page on del.icio.us (the upper right) and select “tags.”
And nadezhda, thanks for the sloppy kiss! :)
Posted by fling93 at 01/14/05, 12:10 PM (link)Way to spread the meme, fling.
I’m annoyed right now because some user “mollycot” is using the “commentblogger” for something else. and i can’t find a way to contact him/her.
Posted by mtl3p at 01/14/05, 02:15 PM (link)Yeah, I noticed that too when I added my blog and LAT. Well, that’s just the way it is with these decentralized social tools. A lot of people will settle into the same tags and the same usage, but not everyone will.
I’m sure issues like these will be discussed a lot more now that Technorati’s in the tagging game.
Posted by fling93 at 01/14/05, 02:24 PM (link)and I’m using the trick from martin lessard of using fake #anchor’s after the url in order to store more than one comment on delicious under the same post.
check it out:
http://del.icio.us/mtl3p/mycomments+anchorexample
Actually, you don’t need to use fake anchors when posting comments to del.icio.us from sites like mine, which offer comment permalinks with real anchors. Just click on the time of your comment, and then post that to del.icio.us. The bonus is that when you click on the link from del.icio.us, you’ll be brought straight to your comment!
Unfortunately, not all sites offer that (although some do, they’re just not visible unless you view the page source, but that’s probably more work than most people — other than me — are willing to do), but I try to encourage it whenever I can. And hey, I got results from Matt Yglesias on that!
w00t! I’m king of the world! Bow to the power of posting comment permalinks to del.icio.us!!! BOOOWWWW, I says!! Don’t make me get that waffle I stole from Giblets! A waffle which, incidentally, is quite delicious but is not posted to del.icio.us, cuz then everyone else could eat it! :)
Posted by fling93 at 01/14/05, 02:52 PM (link)Wait a minute, on blogs that don’t have linked comments but do allow HTML, can’t you just create your own anchor tags? E.g.:
<a name=anchorname></a>
Or will the name attribute get stripped out?
Posted by praktike at 01/15/05, 11:57 AM (link)Apologies mtlp3 and fling93. I read about it somewhere else, and either I read it wrong or they said the wrong tag to use. I can’t find that page now.
I’ve changed them all to mycomments.
Should I tag my lj as commentblogger, or is that just if I display my comments? Not that my comments are worth recording anyway, but it seems a fun thing to experiment with.
So, the only complaint I have thus far is the javascript for the “bookmark this popup” thing to drag into your Firefox bar is that it has it pop up behind my main window.. anyone know how to tweak that off the top of their heads here?
Posted by mc_masterchef at 01/15/05, 05:02 PM (link)praktike: on blogs that don’t have linked comments but do allow HTML, can’t you just create your own anchor tags?
Sheesh, I’ve never thought of that. Certainly sounds like it’s worth a try. I like having comment permalinks available for threading purposes (albeit I seem to the only one willing to do all that typing), so I generally ask for them anyway.
mollydot: Apologies mtlp3 and fling93.
Oh, no worries. Mike was mostly worried about not being able to contact you. And even if we couldn’t, we would’ve just switched to an unused tag.
mollydot: Should I tag my lj as commentblogger, or is that just if I display my comments?
Mike’s proposal was to tag your blog if you display your comments. And I personally think the “mycomments” tag usage is enough to see how much that is taking off.
mc masterchef: it has it pop up behind my main window
Well, I’ve generally not used the popup version of posting and unfortunately don’t know javascript. I’m sure it’s possible to tweak it or ask someone to tweak it, but I don’t know of any way to do it now. But maybe one of the posting tools like nutr.itio.us (temporarily down, though) or Cocoal.icio.us (if you’re a Mac user) might be better to your liking?
Realize that del.icio.us is still not that mature yet, so features are still being added.
Posted by fling93 at 01/15/05, 07:05 PM (link)mollydoy just to reiterate, the idea is:
1. to tag your comments, mycomments
2,. if you are posting yourcomments back to your site (see here for a howto), then just tag your own blog “commentblogger” so we can see who’s doing that step.
cheers.
Posted by hugh at 01/15/05, 07:45 PM (link)OK, I’m in business. But now I’ve got some more questions. Here’s what I’d like to do. I’m going to cross-post this in LAT’s comments thread as well in case anyone comes up with some ideas.
1. I’d like one feed for my clips of other peoples’ stuff, and one feed for my comments so I can display them separately in the sidebar. Any suggestions?
2. I’ve only got one “inbox” that creates a custom aggregated feed. Right now, my inbox has feeds from several people (fling being one of course) whose clipping on certain LongTail, meta and RSS tags I’m interested in following. I’d like another group of feeds of some blogs/tags combos on Russia. And I’d like a further one on China etc….
I don’t want all of del.icio.us Russia-related tags fed to me. I want to create my own custom feed that aggregates blogs that follow Russia and the near abroad plus some tags from some other selected sites plus a couple of fairly narrow tags from all of del.icio.us. Can I produce the equivalent of multiple inboxes?
Can del.icio.us subscribe to non-del.icio.us RSS feeds like a blog? I was under the impression that it couldn’t, or didn’t see where you would go to add the feed if you can (you can bookmark a feed, but it doesn’t display). Right now I’m using Bloglines for my RSS feeds, and del.icio.us to store and categorize them (and see what others are reading). (By the way, my feed is probably ready for it’s closeup Chez Nadezhda - the clippings blog is probably defunct except as a blogroll).
I made a “User” category for other people’s del.icio.us accounts that I follow (not individual posts, which in your and prak’s case I’ve gone and given their own, but I imagine you could create something broadly similar) but I’m not clear if you’re like looking for a category feed to export to ChezNadezhda or an aggregated group of individuals’ feeds to subscribe to in their own unique “inbox” in that particular case.
Posted by mc_masterchef at 01/16/05, 07:00 AM (link)chez Nadezhda sidebar now has del.icio.us clippings boxes for prak, the Chef and me. Also “mycomments” boxes for prak and me.
Would be nice to be able to aggregate them in an internal reader a la Drupal, but Bloghabor isn’t that flexible. You just get to put display templates — no way for hacks of the RSS feed/reader functions.
A function to keep in mind for the next iteration of chez Nadezhda.
I’ll explore the Chef’s ideas for user for my own personal feed-tracking on del.icio.us. May solve the matter.
BTW, should clarify my question re inbox —
it’s actually not tags of entries produced on the blog or site I would track. I don’t think that’s available from del.icio.us (yet).
What I would do, as I’ve done with fling, is track tags produced by the del.icio.us member who runs or is affiliated with the site.
Posted by nadezhda at 01/16/05, 10:29 AM (link)mc masterchef: Can del.icio.us subscribe to non-del.icio.us RSS feeds like a blog?
No, it’s intended as a bookmark manager, not an RSS reader, although if people start using it for all sorts of stuff, I suppose Joshua could extend it to supplant Bloglines.
nadezhda: 1. I’d like one feed for my clips of other peoples’ stuff, and one feed for my comments so I can display them separately in the sidebar. Any suggestions?
Well, I’d create new tags corresponding to each item for your sidebar, and then just use those tags’ RSS feeds.
In the other direction, you can also have your sidebar show only a subset of your comments by creating a “public” tag and then tagging the comments you want publicly viewable with both “myComments” and “public” and then using the RSS feed from the public+myComments tag page. Click on “add” next to the “related tags” for which you want an intersection.
nadezhda: I want to create my own custom feed that aggregates blogs that follow Russia and the near abroad plus some tags from some other selected sites plus a couple of fairly narrow tags from all of del.icio.us. Can I produce the equivalent of multiple inboxes?
Ooh, not that I’m aware of. And tag unions aren’t supported yet, either. If your RSS aggregator supports it, you can just subscribe to multiple feeds and put them in the same location. I don’t really understand Chef’s idea on this, but if you do, then I guess that doesn’t matter. :)
Posted by fling93 at 01/17/05, 07:10 PM (link)fling —
you are personally responsible for creating a monster!
BTW — belated thanks for the reminder on the buried bios etc. Will be remedied in the coming days.
In any event, come check out the new extension to chez Nadezhda. It’s still in sandbox stage, but it’s fun.
Posted by nadezhda at 01/25/05, 01:22 AM (link)Heh, I was wondering for a while what connection that article had with all this… until I realized you wrote it! :)
What extension are you referring to? CTG?
Posted by fling93 at 01/25/05, 12:41 PM (link)I really like the look of your comments elsewhere feed. Right now, I think I’m going to focus mostly on the link blogs in the sidebar. I’m using Feedroll on chez Nad & prak’s using RSS-java on LaT, so we’ll have some experience to compare.
Thanks for all your good comments today!
Posted by nadezhda at 02/03/05, 11:01 PM (link)I’m glad you like it. Since del.icio.us is a social tool, I’ve always written for the “extended” field as for an audience, as Mike noticed. Now that others are using the “myComments” tag and that I have them on the sidebar, I’ve been even more careful about being descriptive with a summary or quote.
I’ve no idea if this piques anybody’s curiosity enough to actually click on them, but I like to think they look interesting as well. I also seem to be commenting a little bit more often. I’m sure I’ll continue to do so at your blog plenty more in the future.
Posted by fling93 at 02/04/05, 12:34 AM (link)