On Comments

Word!

VR/

I think that you should rename this post. New title:
The Comments Manifesto

Rather than a blog by (insert names here), Design Observer has taken on a life of its own. Whether or not this is the goal, well populated and content-rich sites become entities to readers and responsibilities to the producers.

The friendly but critical dialogue is what makes the site valuable. I tend to not comment when I agree with what is being said. I hope other followers learn from this post.

Thank you for the design observer.

Thanks for posting this. Having worked on the erstwhile Speak Up, and other weblogs, I feel these guidelines are both necessary and helpful. For one, it sets the tone of the website and all conversations that expand into the comments. Secondly (and this is the parent and professor in me), people need to be told how to behave. I look forward to DO 3.0.

Why not take more control by creating a log-in for anyone who wants to leave comment? You could deny accounts to those who are abusive of your terms, and I don’t think it would detour those opinionated enough to leave a comment in the first place. Is there some other reason why this wouldn’t work that I’m not thinking of?

I loved this post! (sorry, I couldn't resist)

One small request as you launch DO3.0: please increase the contrast between background color and link color! Particularly in the Observed column. Perhaps even a secondary color for the hover state!

Apologies for an off-topic-ish (and thus meta) comment but this is the first I'd heard of a new DO. Hope it's not too late to be helpful. Thanks.

"We reserve the right to edit or delete comments that do not adhere to this standard. "

I did not realize that DO edited some replies. I guess this makes sense in that Art Chantry told me he was edited quite a bit in an article a while ago. I guess he didn't adhere to the standards. When a submission is edited could DO at least tell us so?

Swiss

Dear Swiss,

Good idea. We'll be as transparent as possible about which comments are being deleted or edited, and why.

Our policy up until now has been to send a note to the commenter offline if we took them down, but as was said in the article, the most problematic comments are often anonymous.

Michael

Why not use Recaptcha, a captcha system that also contributes to digitising books?

I love this!!!!

As a new-ish visitor to the site, and one who has not commented before, I find the above an eminently sensible way forward that might also prompt me to comment more often.

I'm confused. Are anonymous comments allowed on the new site or not?

Start naive, enthusiastic and open.
Finish, cowering, conservative, and closed.

When the power structures of the world shift those who have the most to lose start hoarding against the hordes. They resent pre-senting questions where answers will suffice. This is still a discipline concerned with solving problems afterall. Indeed, after all is done their is nothing to be said. No need to engage the (ab)users, to seek criticism, insights, improvements, other ways, means, methods. Authority is an assumption on the right to authority. The principle of principality directs the directive. The language of this post and reveals the the editors analysis of their readers: tolerated peripheries. Their distrust enables them to present their disengagement as an improvement on prior engagements. 0.3. Sequential. Linear. Owned. Locked.

Rather than embracing designers and others at large editors capitulate to the protocol of inherited systems. This model merely affirms an alignment to century old procedures. Publishing and Broadcasting. Message ---> Communication ---> Receiver. Beauty and Simplicity versus Noise and Complexity. The bumbling humanist reason that motivates this move comes to obscure and obliterate that which is other. Make everything proper, clean that up. Design is about communication. MAke it clear. A potential community of potential is reduced to invited guests. No dissent. No disruption. No trainers. No hoods. No photographs. Be polite. Obey. Exclude and protect. Order and control. Limit and determine. Own and direct. Yours not mine.

But this desire to control and direct destroys opportunities to interpret the totality of design discourse. "This is stupid" expresses how uncritical design discourse is. Removing it masks rather than eliminates. Not just for our present, but for a time to come. Researchers of the future are left with the sterile and vacant space of well designed appearances that tell us nothing about who we are/were/will be.

Reflect. Challenge. Create.

Reset your restrictions and disperse your control. Release access to a community of the concerned. Have faith in those that have built the value of this site alongside you, but remain sidelined and marginalised. Step down from the podium. Join the crowd. Jump into the stream and be swept away in the common.

Or die.

Non Anon, Could you give me an email at tim.r.donaldson_at_gmail.com, I would like your opinions on a project I am working on.


Looking forward to DO 3.0 btw.

Dear A.,
Anonymous comments will still be permitted.
Michael

Kudos to the editors for the thoughtfully articulated new policy. I love a gadfly (perhaps more than most), but lately it had felt like the chronic naysayers were controlling the conversation on nearly every post. Time to take back the editorial reigns.

or "reins". Editorial help here? It's late.

...and kudos to "non-anon" for a too long, not twitter-y, thoughtful, anonymous critical post that says something that must be taken seriously if DO is to maintain the energy that has propelled its expanding empire in the first place. there are tons of reasons the cranks like myself have to cower in anonymity; just take a look at the bloodlessness of most design criticism and its fraternity, collusion, or plain old conflict of interest. A guy could lose his job saying what needs to be said. So here's to the miss representations, and even that inimitable "nancy"...i'll miss em if you cut 'em. And how can we be sure that "Michael Beirut" really is just one person, anyway?

Dear plakaboy,

Any longer i try not to comment on blogs because I found even though I thought they were taking my ideas, I was really paranoid that they were taking my ideas, It didn't matter anymore. Twelve years of active commenting on the internet may give you a tough skin, but what good did that do St Bartholomew, anyway. Two hours in the sun everyday makes mine more supple.

DO can take this as a goodbye. To you, be careful: They'll hurt you and desert you. Well, they'll take your soul if you let them.
Oh yeah, but don't you let them.

With the launch of Design Observer 3.0 — can we now post images in the comments?
Here is an image test: