Comments on Comments

I find it a daunting experience to read down through the threads on big weblogs like "Daily Kos" or "Atrios" or "Political Animal" when they have up to a hundred or more comments each. Often the word "thread" turns out to be a serious misnomer, as the thread of thought is soon lost, sometimes permanently, and the comments veer off now here, now there, taking so many different turns -- some entirely reasonable and others having no relationship to reason or to the original topic -- that they make my head swim.

It reminds me of a classic line by the great Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) : "He jumped on his horse and rode off in all directions."

I used to brave thrashing through those big threads anyway, more than I do now, because I was interested in the topic that they were supposed to have, even though that could be dumped overboard as early as the very first remark. But then I discovered what I call the "Dohiyi Mir" family -- Guy Andrew, Andante, Steve Bates, WoofWoof, and others -- and I go first to their more modest threads.

And at the bottom of that scale, now I have my own weblog, with few readers and comments at all.

These much calmer waters are not all bad. Many would call that lack of comments a deficiency. I don't really know how to correct it, and even if I knew, I doubt that I have it in me to do so . In fact, the condition might not be correctable, and I'm not even certain that it IS a deficiency.

I didn't seriously think of starting a weblog until I saw one called "Inanis et vacua." That, too, has a noticeable scarcity of comments, yet the guy there has been posting his very interesting thoughts for over a year without his brain having split apart with his lobes flying out of his skull in all directions. It is also only loosely "timely," and that's one of my things, too!

I suppose that someone could say that in my choice of posts here, I'm as inconsistent as those big threads. I can't talk politics every day, so I end up going wherever fancy takes me. But almost everyone does that -- except those people with a mission, like Juan Cole, Josh Marshall, and Riverbend. They don't have comments systems and thus commentors who might mess with their focus.

But if one's weblog is public, then it's good to have comments, because in that case it's all a matter of communicating.

Expressing is something else, and a tree that falls in the forest DOES make a sound. You can hear it best when you find the tree lying on the ground.