The evolving nature of commentary

The New York Times published a “Diagram of a Blog” this week, which maps out the natural evolution of commentary on a blog post from the posting of the “original thesis” through the “initial deferential comments”, “point of ultimate repudiation”, “point of ultimate contrition”, and “the end” of discussion. The diagram infers that a pattern exists in the discussion of blog articles. I would argue that this pattern is only ever truly observable on posts where many comments are made, forming some sort of discourse, and where there are more than 2 or 3 participants.

Have you noticed this pattern in commentary on your blog?

Upon closer inspection this diagram is as easily attributable to many forms of group discussion (mailing list, forum, debate, etc.), and is therefore also a study of human communication / interaction tendencies to me. Being prepared is key in any situation, and in the largely volatile matter of reader participation, having an idea of the conversations one may be faced with is of great value.

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CT 27 Dinner - April 2007

The “Gauties” (i.e. Aquila and I) trekked to the Mother City for 27-4, Cape Town’s 2nd 27 Dinner, this Thursday amidst rain and winter temperatures. Inevitably this meant a day of shopping for warm clothes, a cloud enshrouded Table Mountain, and many reassurances that “the weather is not always like this”!

The event itself was hosted at the Cape Town Hotel School, which is on the Cape coastline in Mouille Point. The school has a stunning view of the bay, especially from the parking lot, which afforded us our first view of the ocean on Friday.

As for the dinner, it was rather different to the Jo’burg events, and seemed very much more laid-back - more of a social event than the usual frenzied networking feeding pool I’ve become accustomed to back in the City of Gold. As with Jo’burg, the speakers were all very entertaining and provided alluring food for thought to accompany the delicious three-course dinner and now obligatory Stormhoek.

The scheduled speakers were:

And on the soap box:

It was great meeting up with a number of the CT bloggers including Dave Duarte (the energetic hip and happening MC for the evening), Martin Hattingh, Max Kaizen (as vivacious as she is online), Nikki Friedman, Henk Kleynhans, Neil Blakey-Milner, Jacques Marneweck, Kevin Tucker, Nico and Marelize de Wet, and Miguel dos Santos. I hope to catch up with some of the others that I never got around to chatting to (including those fab zoopy people) as well as the bloggers who were deterred by the weather (surely you guys aren’t afraid of a little rain?! ) at another 27 Dinner!

Technorati tags: 27dinner, 27-4, cape town, aquila, victoire

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

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