Misc. Ramblings

One of the core paradigms of the Internet is the idea that it is a public bazaar (see the Cluetrain Manifesto, by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, especially the chapter on "Markets are Bazaars") where not only conversations can occur, but are facilitated by its very structure. In reference to this, and yesterday's post on blog commenting, I often wonder why MovableType doesn't have threaded commenting with automatic email notification (with the text of the comment) going to the person who's comment is being replied to.

As it stands now (although I don't know if this is different in MT 3.2beta), if someone leaves a comment, MT automatically emails me the text of the comment. This lets me know that a conversation may have begun and also allows me to reply, via email to the comment (if the poster left their email address).

But this is where the public conversation ends. From that point forward, the conversation continues via (more or less) private email. This continues unless I copy and paste the conversation into my blog comments. Thus, a large and perhaps important part of the public conversation may be lost.

Further, if there are multiple people commenting on a post, it sometimes becomes confusing as to what is being commented on. That is, is the person commenting on the original post or someone else's earlier comment? Unless the author of the latter comment explicitly says so, it may be unclear and the conversation becomes muddled, if not completely confusing.

I suggest that threading would take care of the problem of what is being commented on and that automatic emailing of replies to comments could let people know that the conversation is continuing (or not, as the case may be).

I dunno, just my two cents on something that has bothered me about MT, and many other blog software systems, for a long time.