Back on Sunday, I wrote a piece entitled
Aristocratic Right-Wing Blogosphere Stagnating. My general argument was that the more community oriented blogger platforms employed by progressive and liberal bloggers was the cause for the significantly greater rise in traffic in the left-wing blogosphere, relative to the right-wing blogosphere, over the past two years. Although I did not expect much, I actually was interested to see what conservative bloggers thought about my piece. This morning, I received an email that granted me my wish:
I respond to your post:
http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=8279
BTW, you may not know this, but Jerome Armstrong and I jumped on the Howard Dean bandwagon very early, and for very different reasons. In early 2003, we used to trade hopeful polls about how well Dean was doing in, say, Iowa.
It's a pity Dean couldn't be your presidential candidate. But I'm really, really, glad he's your party chairman. I hope you keep him there forever :-)
--PoliPundit
So, I went to the thread to see what sort of response it would generate. Naively, I was a little worried that some of them would recognize a problem and start adopting Scoop. However, not surprisingly, the comments there were overwhelmingly negative, and utterly rejected any need for change.
The general disagreement came in two forms. The first type was to argue that right-wing blogs have just as much, if not more, community than left-wing blogs. The second type argued that conservatives were superior to liberals because they didn't need the same type of community.
Here's the first type:
Poli,
You have overlooked the most important point.
Liberal Blogs require membership. If a conservative joins and posts a conservative comment his membership is stripped and his comment is deleted.
I challenge the base of Chris Bowers' argument. The largest liberal blogers DO NOT ALLOW COMMENTS.
He would know this if he ever posted a conservative commetn on a liberal blog site.--Comment by jtc | Email | 6/14/2005 - 12:49 pm
I always figured that on the Liberal sites there were more visitors that wanted to just "hear" themselves talk Vs. on the more conservative sites where people only add comments when they feel they are extending the conversation with different ways of interpreting the facts presented and not just repeating what someone else has already said. -Comment by TrueLiberal | Email | 6/14/2005 - 1:26 pm
If I want to post a diary, article or poll I'll do it on my own blog. Why should I take up bandwidth here to do that when my diary/article/poll is probably not anything that would interest anyone else anyway. I enjoy reading Poli and the Anchoress. Others, I don't frequent too much. Keep on truckin', Poli, you're doing a great job and it is deeply appreciated by us knuckle dragging red-necks from red states with no edjumacation. -Comment by Jeanette | Email | Homepage | 6/14/2005 - 1:33 pm
It all boils down to this: Liberals, having failed to win at the ballot box, decimated on talk radio, and rapidly losing their grip on the MSM, desperately need to boost their fragile self-esteem by claiming superiority in the blogosphere, even though that too is a dubious proposition.
They've either lost or are losing on every front, and are clinging to anything.
It's really pathetic watching this guy twist himself into knots.
Losing losers and the losing that makes them lose it. -Comment by Marty | 6/14/2005 - 2:06 pm
Chris Bowers-um it takes a while to learn about a site-I am more familiar with LGF-and I'll have to tell you about that site-but I have been on some heated threads where trolls say abusive things to Charles specifically and that stuff stays up- I have only known Charles to ban one commenter-and that commenter was extremely anti-liberal.
Also the posts that Charles does on his blog are hugely commenter driven-you just have to know how it works. --Comment by anon | 6/14/2005 - 2:06 pm
A truer indication of how "community-based" a site is, is whether or not people can freely express contrary opinions. Chris, of all people, has sure benefited from that freedom here at polipundit. Being able to post diaries...? Who cares? Chris has come up with a phony definition to support a ridiculous assertion. -Comment by Tom | Email | 6/14/2005 - 2:32 pm
Here's the second type:
Notice how much bowers talks about "community." it's socialism vs. free market of ideas in the blogworld. You get a bunch of people that agree with you and then you start your own blog. Or you start you own blog and try to attract readers by offering something different. -Comment by nemov | Email | 6/14/2005 - 12:47 pm
Actually I think Mr. Bowers doesn't understand the nature of the conservative blogosphere very well. He correctly notes the huge number of sites, although few individually as trafficked as DailyKOS, However, the power of the conversative blogosphere has never been having one or two voices that everyone listens to. Its the power of having two hundred or more voices all chanting variations on a tune until the MSM is forced to listen.
And honestly, having comments isn't going to affect the reach of a blog. Its the quality of the writing and the number of others who will link, trackback and build other pages about similar things that helps a lot.
And yes, having comments does leave you very open to trolls, which is why many sites won't have them. Although admittedly there are also conservatives who go and try to troll at DailyKOS, but I understand that he's rather quick to block posters he doesn't agree with. (I don't visit his site as he has rarely impressed me with any insights he's had)--Comment by mvargus | Email | 6/14/2005 - 12:48 pm
And who gives a damn about reading someone's stupid diary?--Comment by Joe | 6/14/2005 - 1:14 pm
Couple people have gotten pretty close. But the liberal blogs have a need for community in the sense that having a working knowledge in their short lives they need coaching. Conservative blogs tend to be a bit more mature becuase the people that run them are!
So what is the point? If one has no view point most accept someone elses. If one does have a viewpoint then one feels compelled to voice it on one's own terms. Tends to the following the liberal `gatherer' vs the conservative `hunter' sytle.
Just my sense of it. -Comment by JohnM | Email | 6/14/2005 - 1:53 pm
In any case, I think that the prevalence of Scoop sites on the left shows that liberals like their cocoon (er, community) and are more afraid of setting up an independent site. Conservatives, on the other hand, are much more comfortable as proprietors of their own sites.
What is better - a cocoon (er, community) of diaries all hosted on the same blog? Or a network of independent (but like-minded and interlinking) blogs? I'd take the latter.--
Comment by Al | Email | 6/14/2005 - 2:37 pm
I have my own theory, assuming the numbers are correct: liberal blogs foster a sense of community because they feed off of paranoid 'alternative' views of reality. Despite their frequent claim to be part of the 'reality-based' community, it seems there is no theory so outlandish that it will not be given instant credence by the Kossacks. If there is no place for your views in the mainstream, you seek out the fringe. (via a trackbask in the comments)
One lengthy comment contained both types, bizarrely claiming that the right had more and better community, and then arguing community was bad::
jtc:
But herein lies the rub.
Chris Bowers seems to be making the argument that liberals believe in community whereas conservatives go off to start their own blogs.
But conservatives, based on my (admittedly limited) observations, appear to be willing to create a broader community (by inviting liberals to co-post). Which liberals appear to refrain from doing.
So, is this really "community" at work at all, or, as with Howard Dean, deepening the base?
BTW, I remember coming across such arguments in the late 1980s and early 1990s in comparisons of Japanese and American approaches to software and computers. The Japanese were starting to create "software farms," and the argument was that these entities were far more efficient and effective than American software firms, where programmers would go off on their own after a few years to start up their own companies. Nobody, it was argued, wanted to work to create a larger "community" or entity; everyone was too busy trying to strike it rich.
Naturally, the Japanese were going to beat us, given their greater sense of community and subsuming the individual to the collective.
And we all know how that turned out! -Comment by Lurking Observer | Email | 6/14/2005 - 1:32 pm
At least one person did seem to understand what I was writing about:
Chris is taking data and then drawing a sweeping conclusion from it about what people want in blogs and related internet sites. It's far from clear that his conclusion follows from the data.
The differences he points out between left and right sites are interesting to note. Having only rarely visited some of the left leaning sites I had to think a minute to realize what he was referring to by "diaries". As some here have pointed out, it reflects a difference in philosophy that fits well with the socialism vs. free market contrast.
Which is "better"? That depends on how you define better. According to his data they are winning in page hits so on that metric their model might seem to be better (at least for purposes of ad revenue). But data about blogs doesn't have a large enough time history to be definitive. It's impossible to say whether the recent trends are due to the site model or to other factors.
I will say that requiring registration is for a significant disincentive to posting a comment. It's a barrier which poses no limitation once you have registered, but is a hinderance to new particpants. (Hypocrisy note: my own blog [at blogspot] requires registration for comments but that decision was made by my co-blogger/host). -Comment by KeithK | Email | Homepage | 6/14/2005 - 1:45 pm
This is an interesting comment, which rightly points out that I do not have enough data to draw my conclusion as strongly as I did in the original post. Only time and further research will tell which model truly drives more traffic. Still, considering what is obviously near-unanimous resistance to the use of Scoop-style community sites expressed both here and on many other high traffic right-wing blogs, it would appear that the right-wing blogosphere is not going to change their blogger platforms. At the very least, this will allow us to continue to compare the relative performance of the two sides.
I may not have the data to definitively prove that our model will work best, but I definitely like our chances. If the right wing is happy to thrown down the gauntlet and claim that their method is better, that is one duel I am more than happy to accept. If my post agitated them into maintaining their current platforms, all the better. Two years ago, they were crushing us. Now, we are well ahead. Let's see where both sides are in one year.