Yesterday, in my Tumblr dashboard, I saw a post by Marco about spam from Parallels. In it he says
I can confidently say that VMWare’s is the far better product. It’s much more polished, and most importantly, much more stable than Parallels
Now I have been running Parallels 4.0 since I switched to my Mac and I have been very happy with it (it has continued to be stable since I wrote my post). This is a simple (and single) datapoint, nothing else.
Instead of blogging about this here (as I have now done) or reblogging Marco’s post, I would have preferred to simply leave a comment on his post. Why?
My primary motivation for creating a post on my blog is to show something that I care about at that particular moment. Spam from Parallels or Marco’s experience with the product did not fit that criterion right there and then (which is not to say that it might not have at some other point – this is a very subjective criterion).
Marco’s post had a picture of the email and was making at least two separate points: one about him considering it spam and another about his experience with both VMWare Fusion and Parallels. My own experience speaks only to one aspect of this. I would find a reblog the appropriate gesture if I wanted to engage with more of the post instead of providing a tiny data point.
Reblogging is a form of superdistribution. Personally, I am much more inclined to provide superdistribution when I agree with a post. To me it includes an aspect of endorsement, even if one adds text that disagrees. Again this is very subjective, but I suspect that the vast majority of reblogs is of things that people agree with. (Aside: Marco certainly doesn’t need superdistribution from me!)
For these reasons, I would have been much happier to leave a one-line comment on Marco’s post. Now I also understand some of the downsides of comments for blog owners. Every once in a while someone will leave a comment that at best has one scratching one’s head or at worst is downright offensive. I consider comments to be on the blog’s “real estate,” so I believe in the blog owner’s right of control. My (highly) personal choice is to leave comments unless they are offensive to others. Another potential “downside” of comments is that commenters (unlike rebloggers) often expect a response. Personally, I consider that an upside of comments but I also think that not responding to a comment is perfectly acceptable.
In summary, comments and reblogs to me are slightly different gestures and I am happiest (both as blog writer and reader) when both of them are available. That way I (or my readers) can choose the gesture which they find most appropriate at the time. Ideally, technology makes using both gestures really easy for readers and enables writers to display the results of these two gestures as they see fit.
