After reading about John’s reaction to Kumiko’s decision to disable comments on her blog, I started thinking about what really defines a blog. Blog is short for Web Log. It could have been named Web Diary, Web Journal, Internet Journal but the name Web Log stuck. According to Wikipedia, the term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com.

Back in 1996 I was “blogging” so to speak on a computer hardware company’s website. I would post once or twice per week in the “updates” section of the website announcing new products, promotions and tips for computer care. At the time, there was no term to describe what I was doing. I was just “updating the website”. In these pre-blog days, there were no comments. The “updates” section provided a section that could be changed rapidly without having to alter the content on the main website.

John’s position on the matter is that, a blog without comments is not a blog at all. I have to disagree with this. While a blog with comments may provide an easy communication tool between the blogger and the readership, there is always e-mail. When blogging first started, a blogger would post his or her thoughts and readers e-mailed their comments or questions to the blogger. In a future post, the blogger may even reference some of these e-mails.

When starting this blog, I was very close to launching it without comments. In the end, I decided some feedback would be great for my first official blog. Even with comments enabled, I still have readers e-mailing questions and comments that I guess they didn’t want others to read. Sure, enabling comments on a large blog such as John’s lets everyone know that his blog is extremely active and busy. Perhaps that is the true motivation for saying that a blog without comments is not a blog at all?

What do you think? You can let me know in the comments! :)

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