Who Said Comments Are Dead?

We don’t see as many comments on blog posts these days, as most discussion has moved to other forums, such as Twitter or Google+. But this doesn’t mean that comments are completely dead.

In his book on Technical Blogging, Greg Ferro says that comment volumes have dropped over the last few years:

Five years ago I loved the comments from the readers who could point out my mistakes (which I would fix) and discuss ideas and ask questions. Today I get very few comments as most people who might have left comments have moved to Twitter.

Robert Scoble is more forthright, declaring comments dead.

I agree that we see fewer serious comments on blogs now. But this doesn’t mean that comments are dead - take a look at the comments on “Twitter tweet slugfest: Cisco ACI vs. Arista Networks.” It’s up to 90 comments so far, with posts ranging from IETF processes, Power supply efficiency, Arista EOS internals, and of course far more detail about specific linecards and testing methodologies than you really wanted to know.

My personal favourite might be the post on estimating total theoretical possible data center power draw based on a maximum 150m allowed by OM4 MMF 100Gb cabling. (TL;DR: About 75MW).

It’s worth taking the time to read through the comments. Just try to ignore some of the personal attacks, which thankfully seem to settle down after a while.