A New Comment Paradigm 3

Michael,

I don't know if I'd be in the majority but there's no way I'd ever comment on a site that made me put my credit card in first. I really think this is a bad, bad idea (no offense :-)

Y'know, they probably ought to charge $.02 per comment for obvious reasons.

I would be willing to do that for a discussion forum I really liked, but not most blogs. If I was going to pay to put in a comment, I'd expect a level and style of discussion which I couldn't get in something like a blog. Even most discussion forum's don't tend towards the analytical style I'd want in something like that. (I'd see it as more paying for the quality of response, than paying just for posting)

Also it would have to be something that made it easier to check back than blogs are. No criticism, it's just that blogs aren't designed to encourage debate

Geez, Michael, you wrote the post I was gonna write at some point. Argh! That'll teach me never to forward you stuff like that BitPass document again! Heh. ;-)

I do think people would pay two cents to "put their two cents in" on a good blog. I'd pay, for example, to engage in substantive discussion on den Beste's blog, or Postrel's, or yours, or Darren Kaplan's, or Donald Sensing,'s, or Jeff Jarvis' blog.

Technerds would likely pay a penny or two to submit comments at Doc Searls' blog.

Etc.

I had the idea months ago, and recently read a story about BitPass and emailed them asking if it could be implemented in a blog comments feature, and got back the response and documents I sent to you.

I'm not going to do it on my blog because I don't get enough traffic. Yet.

Actually, if I did it, I'd want to also have a way to allow known/trusted commenters to post comments for free, while keeping the 2-cent BitPass gateway there mostly to inhibit spam and flame wars and thread hijacking.

BH: Yeah well you stole my site design! Anyway, I have a feeling you'll have more to say on the matter.

Michael: The idea is that you wouldn't have to type in a credit card for the site, you'd just have to log in to BitPass (or whatever). It would probably be integrated into the browser at some point. Also, what do you mean "easier to check back"? It's not that hard to follow comments here, I don't think, if you use the most recent comments page. Then again, my earlier posts on this topic were advocating a message-board-style comments section, which I think would be great.

I know I wouldn't start such a 'service' at this point. I am still at the point where I would almost pay $0.01 for comments.

I'm not worried about the method of charging (that was someone else). I don't use 'most recent comments' pages for 3 reasons:

1) I generally am more interested in reading or at least looking for new stuff, and usually I'm not willing to spend the time looking at two pages. Especially not when I'll have to wade through several issues I haven't commented on and am not actively reading about in order to find the next comment on an issue I want to read about.
2) they remove the comments from context. I'm back at you page 7 hours after I last commented, it could easily have been more than 24 except I found a few free moments at work. I *need* that context to understand what's going on.
3) like any stack-type log a most recent comment page is in an aweful order for conversation.

(thus I rarely comment more than once on an issue unless it remains at the top for a while)

Rather than a "most recent comments" log I'd prefer an ordered list of discussions. (either ordered by most recently active, or by user preference, or preferably by a combination of the activity of debates at several priority levels with debates which haven't seen activity shunted off out of the way). Along with some ID of the last commenter and you'd have a system which encouraged debate. Add a list of unread posts, possibly abstracted, and it would make a good interface for a blog which concentrated on interactivity.

The program logic for that would be fairly easy to lay out, as with anything else actually writing the code would take time, but interface logic is almost alway fairly simple -- the hard work is done by the user and by the database. I don't even like most message board settings for conversations, if a good conversation (or one I like) is unpopular it disappears, if a bad conversation is popular it pegs the top.

If I was paying to make conversation I'd expect something that made that coversation easy to conduct. I expect to get what I pay for, and it would probably make more money :)

As it is, I generally read blogs more to get others opinions than to state my own; which is one reason I don't have a blog of my own. However, if a board started that encouraged conversation through good 'starter' posts, and had a high signal-to-noise ration in the posts I'd be willing to pay to belong. I might be willing to pay to post on a blog, but I wouldn't think of it as conversation, and I'd probably only check back if it was convinient, but it depends a lot of the blogger, and even more on the specific entry.

it's a good idea, but i wouldn't pay to comment.

If I ever come across a site that charges me for the privilege of posting a comment, I'll probably take them up on it once, and only once, just to leave a comment reading "YOU should be paying ME, a******!"

Do you charge your co-workers and neighbors to talk to you too?

Michael: Those are good points, and would play well with the comment system I outlined earlier.

S3 and Xrlq: You're missing part of the point, which is to discourage flamers and spammers. It's a rather minimal cost, and I personally wouldn't mind paying a penny to get involved in a decent discussion. I've tipped bloggers on the order of dozens of dollars, and there's no way I'll ever make a thousand comments on any site.

You need to go back and read what I said again. We aren't the ones missing the point.

S3: Your comment was pretty short, so I don't think I missed anything. I'm quite literate. You implied that the purpose is to make money, when in fact as I stated the purpose is to discourage annoying commenters with nothing to say.

I don't charge people who talk with me money because if I don't want to listen, I just leave. Plus, far fewer people talk to me in Real Life than comment here, and when they talk to me I'm the only one who hears it, and then it's gone. On the blog, comments stick around forever, anyone can read them, and I have to go through the trouble of actively reading and deleting offensive things. Plus, I don't like deleting things, so I'd prefer if offensive things were never posted in the first place.

So yes, I think you were missing the point.

You implied that the purpose is to make money, when in fact as I stated the purpose is to discourage annoying commenters with nothing to say.

No, I implied that you think that you are so important that people should have to pay to talk to you.

Blogging is nothing but conversation. If you don't want the associated problems that go along with it, don't do it, i.e. you said, "[..]if I don't want to listen, I just leave." But don't expect people to pay. You aren't that valuable to society.

S3: And I explained how this blog is different from face-to-face conversations. I actually am providing a service here, as opposed to most standard conversations.

No, I don't think I missed that part of the point. Charging anything to all commenters won't discourage flamers any more than it will discourage legitimate commenters. If anything, potential flamers might be willing to pay more to vent than they would to make a serious, policy based argument that may provide some value to others. As to spammers, a penny per comment spam is a small price to pay, particularly if that penny has to be refunded if/when the comment spam is deleted.

A much better solution is a bigger, better, more advanced version of MT-Blacklist. I envision two blacklists: the individual blacklist, and a group blacklist that can be overriden by an individual whitelist. The group blacklist would be maintained automatically, and would be based on the individual blacklists of those who choose to participate in the group. Once n individuals have banned a given IP address, it will appear on the group blacklist. The value of n would be set at an appropriate level to protect non-spammers from malicious blacklisting on grounds unrelated to spam (e.g., Dean Weenies banning Republicans). Gross abusers of the banning privelge would be excluded from participating in the group blacklist.

actually 1 cent per spam would add up very quickly, unless the spam was carefully targetted, in which case it would no longer be spam. But professional groups would probably be willing to deal with that, unless it was more expensive than normal advertising. It might discourage flames. Money to create and maintain an account, on the other hand would probably do more, because it's a higher momentary costs, and would be lost to a habitual spammer or flammer. So I'd rather account based charges than post based charges.

And I agree that there is something strongly prideful about thinking people will pay anything, no matter how little to talk to you. Yes, everything you are saying is correct (about you providing a service, which costs you effort and money), but it is much more likely no one will comment if they have to pay, at least unless you are providing a lot more than a chance to comment on your opinion, which is not what you intend.

MW: your message board/entry plan is would be very clumsy to use. chances are you'll rarely get more than two threads per entry, and that people would mostly use the main message board for all discussions not any of the minor ones. And it would require a lot of clicks to read all the comments on all the articles you're interested in. That and the effort to decide what threads to move to the main board and what threads to let drop would be a lot of work, and probably lead to a lot of frustrated customers.

One 'board' with links to entry + comment section, rather than with links to a message board discussion, was more what I was thinking about. Even that would require heavy policing by someone to split out divergent threads into different discussions, but that would be necessary to avoid loosing coherence, and it wouldn't require the regular activety that expiring boards would require, only "this tangent should be it's own discussion, I think I'll start that" and some willingness to be a bastard about making sure people post in the right place.

For me the key would be having an ability to sort entries/discussions to keep the ones I wanted near the top, and let the ones I didn't want fall off the scope faster. This is entirely possible with accounts, and creating a way to say "I never want to see this discussion again, unless I specifically search for it" would be a great benefit. As would the ability to say "I'll keep this one around for future reference, even if no one is posting to it."

S3 & Xrlq: As micropayments get easier, I expect that every website will charge access fees of some sort, even if it's far less than a cent.

Michael: Yeah, it's hard to explain what I want, without implementing it. A site with user accounts could provide a lot of flexibility, but there's also a lot of overhead then.

And fine, no one might pay to comment here, but I'd pay to comment on Insta or the Volokh Conspiracy, for instance.

Of course, but providing that service (overhead) is why people would pay.

On Insta or Volokh Conspiracy, I might pay to subscribe, but I still wouldn't pay to comment, again I pay for service, their effort tracking news is a service, a standard barebones comment system isn't enough of one. Also Insta at least (I rarely read volokh isn't the type of site I would go to for interesting and stimulating debate. (or for that matter out and out fights :) for what it's worth, this is)

I just don't see what the problem with paying to comment is. People already pay for public fora through taxes. It costs a stamp to send a letter to a newspaper. If you want a blog, you generally pay for internet access and/or hosting service; likewise with a webpage. You even pay to go stand on a stree corner and yell at people, far more than a penny considering the time and effort it takes to travel to the street corner, buy signs, &c. All these are hidden costs, but when you take them into account I really don't see anything unusual or enraging about paying a penny to leave a comment somewhere.