Friday, February 16, 2007

Blogging Etiquette

Andy Bryan had a particularly nasty string of comments recently and is thinking about how to respond:

So, what do you think? Should bloggers respond to anonymous or name-only comments? Or should bloggers limit the back-and-forth commenting to either people we know or who have a blog of their own?

I don't think that we should limit our conversation to other bloggers. That only limits the medium and discourages people from blogging themselves. But I don't respond to anonymous comments because I think that we should all be held accountable for our words. This doesn't necessarily mean requiring comment registration, but I do want to see a name in name field of a comment, such as those of frequent commentors Keith Taylor, Tom Ream, or Dark Gable.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I like the back and forth, but I don't like the nasty stuff we get enough of that in the world.

I got an anonymous comment recently, that I realized the person needed to protect themselves, but then I wanted to dialogue with them, and could not.

Anonymous said...

John, I'm not a blogger but I frequent several. Part of what keeps me coming back is being able to respond and be responded to.

I would never consider anonymously commenting I want credit for my ideas and would never say something I'm ashamed of.

Anonymous said...

John:

Thank you for clarifying what is meant by "anonymous" comments (both here and at Andy's site). FWIW, I think it is cowardly to opine and not leave a name (real or pseudonym). The same manners one would expect face to face , should be the same manners when participating on someone's blog.

Respectfully,
Dark Gable