Commenting is now wide open

Jun 15, 2008
GoW
meta

Matt from World of Mat­ti­cus con­vinced me to open com­ments to any­one, not just reg­is­tered users. If you’ve reg­is­tered already, thanks much–you’re in the GoW club.

His blog has been run­ning longer than mine, so I can’t refute his advice, because I have no idea what I’m doing. He also runs Word­press on Dreamhost, so if he can make wide open com­ment­ing work, then I guess I can too.

If your blog has been run­ning longer than his and you dis­agree, please let me know. At least you won’t have to reg­is­ter to do so.

More Words!

3 Comments

3 Responses

  1. Matt says:
    June 15, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    My logic behind it is this:

    Peo­ple are lazy.

    If it takes more effort for them to do some­thing, then they’re not really going to do it. But if you want to encour­age dis­cus­sion, you don’t want to make it really hard for them to do it. You don’t want them to have to a) Reg­is­ter b) Ver­ify their email c) Come back again and login. Blogs aren’t forums or mes­sage boards.

    The fastest and most con­ve­nient way is 9 times out of 10 the best way. Let them fill in their name and email and their thoughts. If they cause you trou­ble, there’s always the ban­ham­mer. Blog­gers ought to try to make their blogs as acces­si­ble as much as pos­si­ble to facil­i­tate dis­cus­sion. But try it for your­self first. If you don’t agree or dis­like it, you can eas­ily turn on registration.

    Reply
  2. gowwriter says:
    June 15, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    I agree! Yours was not the first request I received, yours was the tip­ping point. :)

    Reply
  3. Auzara says:
    June 16, 2008 at 11:58 am

    I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Matt for about a month with pos­i­tive results. A+ would lis­ten again!

    Reply

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