Some time ago, I wrote about a post by Doe Eyed on their print process. I also went on to talk about how I thought it was a bit antisocial for them to not allow comments on their post and pontificated about why they would do such a thing. That was several months ago. Some time after that post, Eric from Doe Eyed tried to respond, but ironically, my post would not allow comments.
Jump ahead to this week where I posted again about a new release from Doe Eyed, which also got their attention, and opened the door for them to chime in. Eric wrote me an email to explain their stance on why they keep their comments closed, and his frustration with not being able to respond to my post prior. Once I read his thoughts, I offered to post them here for you, but you might want to read the first post just for a little context. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Done? Good, here is Eric’s comments:
Eric Nyffeler from Doe Eyed here. I just stumbled across the blog post you made about our M. Ward poster a few months ago (Google Analytics turns up some interesting stuff from time to time!). I wanted to start off by saying thanks for the kind words and the coverage, including the Black Keys post today! Every single blog or website post is helpful to getting our work in front of new eyes!
More importantly, I wanted to address the issues you raised in your post about not having a comment system in our blog (ironically, that article itself doesn’t seem to allow comments either).
The reason for not allowing comments on our blog is twofold. Firstly, our blog is custom built to seamlessly fit into our page design and doesn’t utilize any previously made code or platforms. To allow a full commenting system, we would have had to built it from scratch.Secondly, and most importantly, we feel like our website is not the proper platform for public discourse. Our website serves as the primary and first point of contact for most of our clients. We prefer to keep our website focused on our work and our opinions. We don’t need our clients seeing a dozen compliments or inside jokes from our friends saying how much they enjoy such and such poster. On top of that, in the case of random internet trash talking, nothing is lamer or shadier than censoring a blog post, which would certainly be a temptation on our professional site. Certainly none of this is out of of a sense of “too cool for you.” We prefer instead to keep our interactions with our fans on more tradition social medium (where you will find we are highly active and vocal on Facebook, Twitter, and Dribbble, where you will find we have a healthy 2,000+ combined fans). Additionally, comments on personal blogs have little to no viral reach, whereas interactions on social media has a much greater reach. We love talking shit and joking around with our friends and fans…check out some of our past posts and you’ll definitely see that we are not “closing any doors.”
Had I been able to post a comment on your site, I would have posted this so that my explanation would have been as public as your blog.
I hope this clarifies some of the questions and issues in your article
Ok, so I’m an ass, plain and simple, I admit it. The reason my post didn’t allow comments after the fact is because I had it set to close comments after a certain amount of time to keep spammers from hitting up my comments. I thought it would still show the previously made comments and only not allow new ones. Unfortunately, it blocked all the comments, so it looked as if my comments were closed. I have since rectified that problem and I apologized to Eric about the mixup.
Additionally, I’ve operated this blog based on the premise of long standing ideals of how blogs work, including the idea that comments are always a good thing. I also believed that RSS was the end-all-be-all metric of how a blog is doing. Between Eric’s thoughts and some other interactions I’ve had, I’m starting to rethink the previously held beliefs a little. In the ever changing world of social media, the one thing that is constant is change, and that includes how we interact in these spaces.
I don’t necessarily agree with Eric 100%, but I definitely see his point of view and will open my mind to looking at this from all angles, being less hardline about how people should use their technology. More thoughts on this in a future post I think. What are your thoughts?
Image courtesy of Doe Eyed
Hi! I'm Dave and this site is about art, design and how to make it work for you. If you're an artist or a designer and you're looking for help getting your work to market, come along and we'll learn something new together.
