This feels like a classic Goodhart’s Law problem. More comments are good for multiple reasons (feedback, positive reinforcement, more ideas, keeping up the conversation, and so on). It would be good to generate more comments, and do things that do this (as long as we avoid obvious provocations like #1 and #2 above), but if we start maximizing comments with our posts, then if you’re not very careful about it, that path goes south quickly.
One thing I think is both ‘safe’ and effective over time is to reliably engage with your commentators. If you establish a norm that you’re going to clearly read most or all the comments on your own posts, and reply to them when there’s something to say (comments on comments are reinforcement the same way comments are) that sends a clear signal that comments are welcome and valued. I think that worked well on my own blog, but it’s hard to disentangle with many things including ‘I kept writing and got less awful at it in other ways’ or with ‘I kept writing and people finally started reading.’
I’d also note that from my Magic writing I developed the heuristic of a 1000:1 page view to comment ratio as the default outcome, so compared to that we’re doing astoundingly well. My few examples of my blog being linked to by Scott and Marginal Revolution tell me that the 1000:1 remains about right in those contexts.
This feels like a classic Goodhart’s Law problem. More comments are good for multiple reasons (feedback, positive reinforcement, more ideas, keeping up the conversation, and so on). It would be good to generate more comments, and do things that do this (as long as we avoid obvious provocations like #1 and #2 above), but if we start maximizing comments with our posts, then if you’re not very careful about it, that path goes south quickly.
One thing I think is both ‘safe’ and effective over time is to reliably engage with your commentators. If you establish a norm that you’re going to clearly read most or all the comments on your own posts, and reply to them when there’s something to say (comments on comments are reinforcement the same way comments are) that sends a clear signal that comments are welcome and valued. I think that worked well on my own blog, but it’s hard to disentangle with many things including ‘I kept writing and got less awful at it in other ways’ or with ‘I kept writing and people finally started reading.’
I’d also note that from my Magic writing I developed the heuristic of a 1000:1 page view to comment ratio as the default outcome, so compared to that we’re doing astoundingly well. My few examples of my blog being linked to by Scott and Marginal Revolution tell me that the 1000:1 remains about right in those contexts.
Huh. What do you think happens if you optimize to make sure there are between 20-50 comments?
“First!”