Some posts attract many more comments than others. Holding constant the general level of readership, I believe the following features predict higher numbers of comments:
1) If a post sits at the top of a page for a long time
2) If the post invokes a sense of moral outrage
3) If many readers feel they can bring facts or personal experience to bear on the question
4) If the post simply asks for comments or feedback
What do you all think?
I feel manipulated.
5) If the post discusses which posts attract the most comments.
Actually, the correct answer is:
5) The post is about the Britney/K-Fed break-up.
Though I am falling into your carefully developed trap…
In other news, the sky is also blue!
I think there is an element of the p-beauty game in this, because I only read the comments (a necessary prereq to commenting) if I think it is likely that *other* people have decided to comment or will be commenting in the next few hours, since you need a critical mass of comments to get an interesting thread going.
Surely, it wouldn’t be too hard to get some data on this to prove one way or another
Um, not sure 1 thru 4 account why immigration entries elicit so many (and, if I may say, high variance, quality-wise) comments.
3)
Posting deliberately flawed arguments in support of an unpopular position
is pretty much the best way to generate a firestorm of posts. Opponents leap in to
shred your argument, advocates respond by correcting flaws in the original. Of course
this would also be called ‘trolling’, and I’m not saying nor trying to insinuate
that you’ve done this – just seen enough of the dynamic elsewhere.
This also means that (even assuming no deliberate trolling) people who are willing to make
halfbaked arguments will generate a lot more comments than those who make really good
ones.
By way of evidence I’d mention Boudreaux’s analogy-based argument against the
minimum wage. Unpopular position plus loosely-reasoned argument = 100+ comments…
Datum: Kevin Drum, then Calpundit, got a large uptick in comments for a post on In-N-Out Burger compared to the previous posts on what were probably California politics.
Let’s boot up the ole linear regression machine, Sherman!
Before I post a comment, I read the existing ones.
* If previous posters say more substantive things than I’m about to, then I decide not to post (so it was easy to post here).
* If a post already has a lot of comments, I don’t even bother to read them.
If the post is on a hot political topic. Probably related to #2. I remember entries on the minimum wage and immigration drawing many, many comments.
I think you’ve biased the results toward reason # 4.
If you’re blogging in the UK, any blogs about house prices attract MASSES of comments.
If you have a highly technical or intellectual blog, the intellectually rigorous posts will have fewer comments because fewer people will feel qualified to weigh in or at least, to commit themselves to risk and exposure. You’re rather intimidating Tyler, you inspire diffidence in many of us.
Posts that are open-ended, there being no right/wrong answer will draw more comments on a site like this. Many people read blogs that interest them, even tho they don’t have a background in the topic. I feel like a dope reading much of what you and Alex write but I’m sufficiently interested and motivated to learn that I keep coming back -and I don’t even like Libertarians altho I did marry one
. (I love him but not his blog; I read this one but not his).
I asked a similar question on my (technical) blog. The response was that people were more inclined to participate if they could impart personal experience and advice *and* that my entry did not provide a total solution, a pat ready answer. Asking for comments hasn’t really helped me. Oddly enough, an entry I wrote about immigration -econ/politics has *nothing* to do with my blog- was the second most commented upon post I ever published.
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