The reason is that I see most bloggers (especially on single-author blogs) embracing a symbiotic relationship with their audience — what Dan Gillmor wrote about years ago when he praised how much he learns from people in the audience. The difference with articles is the authors usually see them as a closed system — I wrote it and now it’s finished.

The blogger has a different attitude (in many cases, not all) toward the blog post — it is open. It invites debate, additions, contradictions.

I’m not saying blog posts and articles are the only kinds of content units, but I’m suggesting that for a value proposition for comments, they are two different cases.

While I agree that content inviting feedback generally fairs better with guiding the conversation, that conversation must be actively handheld throughout the entire discourse, otherwise it’ll devolve into what we commonly see.

Mainly, I am advocating for publishers to take back their sites and put forth an effort to produce good content across the board. The anonymous Internet has spoken and it’s largely filled with “stupid” noise.

I think WikiPedia’s got it right in a lot of ways, but it’s a great example of a large-scaled guiding hand. Unfortunately, most publishers don’t have that kind of audience and users to self-police.

And then, there’s the wiki model. Another animal altogether. No comments, but feedback is in the rewrites.