On Comments

Whether you’ve been reading Basecharge since its launch three weeks ago, or this is your first time visiting, you’ve probably noticed there is one glaring difference between this site and most blogs (particularly political blogs). There are no comments. Everyone loves hearing from their readers—myself included—but not including comments on this blog was a very intentional design decision. I’ve had some readers ask me “where do I comment?”, so I thought I would explain.

Politics are both divisive and engaging. I’ve read many political blogs in my day, and after reading a great post that I agree with (or disagree with), I’m always interested in what other people think. So I scroll down and read the comments. Unfortunately, what I almost always find are one or two reasonable comments and about 50 people competing in some strange oxymoronic anonymous popularity contest. Rarely is a piece of soundly-reasoned well thought out disagreement or praise found in a comment thread on a political blog.

So, I’ve done away with comments. This is my blog and my (albeit small right now) soapbox. If you disagree with me, by all means write something on your own website. Feel free to send me a link to it and if I feel it’s worthy I’ll gladly respond in kind. I love professional, open & reasoned dialog. What I don’t love is a giant distraction from my hard work at the bottom of each piece that I write.

If you’d like to start a public discussion on a piece, that’s still pretty easy to do. In fact I encourage you to do so because it brings more exposure to this site. Just click on the Facebook or Twitter share buttons at the bottom of each post. There you can hack away at or praise a piece until your heart’s content—just not at the expense of my reader’s attention.

Additionally, if I’m commenting on someone else’s work, the post title link goes directly to the piece I’m commenting on, and the Basecharge logo (to the right of the post title) is a permanent link to the post on Basecharge, so you can share it anywhere you like. If it’s an original piece I’ve written (such as this one), then there is no logo next to the post title, and the post title itself is a permanent link to the piece.