By design, this weblog has no comments. I mulled this over extensively before conclusively deciding against. This post will tell you why.

Thomas Crampton recently guest-posted Deconstructing Bloggers on joi.ito.com, categorizing the types of weblogs commonly seen. In the comments to Thomas' post, professional commenter-without-a-weblog Noel Guinane disparagingly opined: "Blogs that don't allow comments are not really blogs in my opinion. They're Spews; the people running them are spewing forth their opinion with no interest in hearing what anyone else has to say."

Weblogs are about identity, not ego. Ego and identity are linked, but identity is the core set of information that defines you when the world looks at your record. Ego is the gratification you feel while basking in the world's gaze.

To decry weblogs without comments as one-way founts of ego is to miss the point of the web. The web is inherently omni-directional. Anyone may link to anything, in any context. If you want the instant ego-gratification of seeing your words on the screen amidst the babble of multiple others, what you want is a forum. That's what a forum is for, and why most have moderators and rules for civil posting. A weblog is about the views of a specific person or group, which anyone may disagree with, and even make that disagreement public by posting their thoughts about it on their own weblog and linking back to the original.

In-blog comment threads are minimal, site-specific, inbred versions of what the entire blogosphere should be. To argue for them as necessary for true blogging is to argue for a dumbed-down web.

Some time ago, Mark Bernstein posted a short essay on why comments are not good for weblogs, the gist of which is "Weblog comments incite duels. Duels are bad for society. We should all forego comments and return to carefully blogging responses." Building on Mark's ideas, here are reasons why conversations spanning weblogs are the way to go, trumping the strengths of in-blog comment threads at every turn.

The idea goes farther - Inter-blog conversation is far more distributed than the mindspace occupied by comments in a single post of a single weblog. In-blog comments, if read at all, are generally read by the same cheerleading/flamebaiting crew who post in them. Inter-blog conversations, on the other hand, spread the idea far and wide to the readers of each weblog participating in the discussion, linking back and forth to each other as the topic progresses. Anyone is free to jump in and add to the discourse on their own blog.

Home-turf writing is well-wrought writing - Because your weblog is your identity, ideas you publish in its context are of higher quality than those spun off-the-cuff in the tiny confines of a comment in someone else's weblog. A top-level response post is much closer to the quality of an editorial or "letter to the editor" than the public masturbation and cock-waving found as comment threads degrade. You do your best because your identity is riding on every post.

Top-level posts keep the conversation in view - For those few of you carefully laboring over comments, remember as the owner of the weblog posts fresh material, the older post containing your carefully crafted statement of dissent or agreement scrolls off the index page and into the archives. If you comment in a swiftly updated weblog, your comment's eye time is proportional.

A conversation carried on across top-level posts of numerous weblogs over many days will last much longer, progress much farther, be seen by many more eyes than the pitiful stretch given to buried comments.

Top-level posts cannot be censored - If you comment in the weblog of someone who is not interested in your side of the debate for any reason, you may find your opinion deleted.

This can't happen if you post it to your own weblog.

Top-level posts have no added noise - An idea's terrain cannot be explored efficiently in comments. It's impossible to stay meaningful in a long thread of comments peppered with disparaging opinions, jokes and endless sidetracks... witness Slashdot, Dailykos, et al. Additionally, many weblogs with forum-style comments are heavily biased. If you post a liberal comment in a neocon weblog you won't even get a second look before you're dog-piled by the locals.

I'll spend an hour's time following quality inter-blog conversation across many weblogs linking to each other, but I will rarely waste 15 minutes crawling through the morass of "Me, too!" and "Mine's bigger!" or "Fuck you, Noel!" found in most comment threads just to find the lone gem of wisdom. The cost is too high.

In summation:

Using top-level posts across multiple weblogs as tools of group conversation is far superior to the minimal interaction afforded by an in-blog comment thread. Forums are more suitable for situations where lots of immediate interaction is a requirement, without concern over signal to noise ratio. Forums may give you immediacy, but immediacy leads to duels. Duels presuppose winners and losers, and that's not a healthy environment for bringing up ideas.

I'll take my web debates sans duels, thank you very much.

Be assured, I am very interested in what you have to say. I write this weblog because I like to communicate, because I value contact. I prefer my contact to be more direct than the noise-filled channels of a comment thread. This leaves time and mental space for developing working relationships, friendships, and honest human interaction. It allows ideas to grow rather than fade away.

An email link is at the top of every page in this journal. I usually have several conversations going by email at any one time, with cycles of ideas refined by all participating. Many conversations begin as emailed comments on my posts here at 2Second(fuse). Version Two of this weblog, due in the new year, will have an email link built into every post.

I can often be reached on AIM and iChat via the Screen Name on my LiveJournal info page, as many of you reading this can attest.

Best of all, if you post a reply to this in your own weblog, I'll respond to you, continuing the thread here.