Pop Loser

Comments on websites: Totally not worth it. [via]

The occasional brilliant comment maintains the illusion of the worth of comments in general. This is the trap in which Gawker’s Nick Denton is currently gnawing his leg: every once in a while on the internet, for reasons largely outside of individual author control, you get a crazy good comments thread that is full of information, often outshining the post that provoked it.

[…]

But here’s the new thing: I’ve had two separate discussions with friends who run mid-sized internet properties–we’re talking high hundreds of thousands to millions of unique users a month–and they’ve both recently completed heavy analysis on their traffic and come to the somewhat shocking conclusion that the people who actually read comments are a small fraction of one percent of their entire readership.

I turned off comments here back in January. No one seems to have noticed.

Sports Illustrated columnist Jeff Pearlman tracked down a couple of nasty internet commenters and called them up.

Bryant says, “I reply all the time by saying, ‘Thank you for writing, I appreciate your opinion though I don’t know why you needed to insult me.’ The general response is ‘Gee, I didn’t think anyone was paying attention.’ And they want to be pals with you. It’s the kick-the-dog syndrome. People believe no one’s listening; they think we’re not people, they think there are these giant monoliths controlling thought. Then when they realize someone is listening, they rediscover their manners.”

Daring Fireball with comments. Kind of awesome that someone took the time to build it. [via]