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.
This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.
This is a fascinating topic…
No matter how much you think you know going into a conversation, there is ALWAYS a chance someone will change your perspective completely halfway through. The fact that we as humans have the ability to then take this changed perspective, merge it with our original perspective and come up with a (hopefully) better end-result is actually quite amazing, as simple as it sounds!