Imagine a full extension of property rights and a closing off of the "commons" problems known as the comments section of a blog. Marc Andreessen writes:
The first time I met Dave Sifry,
over three years ago, he told me that conversations on the Internet
would eventually all revolve around every individual having a blog,
each individual posting her own thoughts on her own blog, and blogs
cross-linking through mechanisms like trackbacks and blog search
engines (such as Dave’s Technorati).The advantage of this new world, said Dave, is that each individual
(anonymous or not) would be publicly responsible for their own content
and in charge of their own space — substantially reducing the risk of
spam and trolls — and the communication would flow through the links.
There would still be the risk of link spam, but at least this new world
would make people more responsible for their own content, and that
would tend to uplevel the discourse.
But how will readers know which blogs and which comments to visit? I fear that tagging (and related acts of evaluation) is an underprovided public good. How can we compensate effective taggers for their efforts? And do you not enjoy the weaving back and forth of discussion in a single blog thread?
My prediction of the future equilibrium is…the current equilibrium, like it or not.
Here is an article on the future of search.
While we’re at it, I’ll repeat the norms of this blog: it’s fine to be humorous, but don’t treat the other commenters, or for that matter bloggers, in an insulting manner.
I have always wondered why some humans insult each other. Some of them seem to disregard each other’s individuality. I shall point no fingers.
Well, there does seem to be the phenomenon of the outsourced comments section. Language Log doesn’t accept comments, so fans like Language Hat post “mirror” posts where other fans find an outlet for the thwarted need to comment and debate. Andreessen’s notion of how it should all work seems to miss the difference between, say, a series of publications with footnotes picking up points made in other publications, and a seminar where issues are thrashed out on the spot.
I could see a blending of trackbacks and comments that we are already beginning to see when commenters have signed up with blogspot and have their own blog (linking back to that blog). It wouldn’t stop the discussion that we’re having at this blog, but it would incorporate the conversation that I am posting in now into MY blog (were I to have one) so that readers of my blog could see what I am actively discussing.
Perhaps a way to let our many economists to better ‘interact’ through the blogs …
But if you “go around helping the (undervalued) people who insult you, or the people who otherwise signal their independence from you”, you’re just encouraging them. I mean me.
There will be a spam problem regardless, that’s endemic to any open system. But there are different ways to set up the system that have different consequences.
Dave Sifry’s point was that normal people (not spammers) will behave differently when they are posting comments on their own blog under their own name (real or pseudonym) as opposed to just dropping comments on someone else’s blog. It’s the difference between keeping your own house clean vs stubbing out your cigarette on the carpet in someone else’s house that you just don’t care about.
How will people learn which blogs to visit and which comments to read? The same way they do today — by reading blogs. And using meta-services like blog search engines, and ranking systems like Digg, Reddit, and Techmeme. And a thousand other new approaches to discovery, search, and navigation yet to be invented.
Observationally, today, Joe the serious blogger tends to respond to something interesting on Mary’s blog by writing a new post on his (Joe’s) own blog, quoting Mary’s blog entry as needed. Both Joe and Mary own their own comments, they are clearly attributed, and both have a big incentive to behave as best they can to enhance their own reputations. And if Mary behaves like a jerk, then nobody will point to her blog and she will be gnashing her teeth out of sight as opposed to polluting Joe’s blog’s comments.
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