Darin recently suggested that I include some comments on the links section of this site, so people can discuss the often thought-provoking links that I find. Rather than go off-topic on another thread, I thought it would be best to reply here, and open the discussion to anyone who wanted to chime in.
I’ve kicked around putting comments under the links, but it would mean contending with a couple of issues.
# I haven’t seen a design that makes good, clear sense out of sidebar comments yet. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t pioneer one, but I haven’t put a lot of thought into it. 
# I’d also want it to be simple to maintain. Comment spammers will blast anything they can get their ‘bots on, so I want to be sure that policing an additional comments section doesn’t become more trouble than it’s worth.
The good thing is that these links are driven by a Movable Type blog, which means that the engine is there–I would just need to figure out how to keep the design and maintenance simple.
I’d be interested in hearing thoughts on how this might be possible, especially from anyone else who has encountered this problem and how they solved it.
I dunno.
To do it right, it almost seems like you would need a thread for each link.
I guess it could be fun, but i’m not sure doing it in a sidebar is the way to go. Then again, i don’t have any suggestions either
Mike.
K,
Are you running MT-Blacklist? If so, has it reduced your comment spam?
Pez, I’m not. I never got around to installing it (I forget why), but I haven’t had too much spam in the past months. And, really, I never was getting them on the order of dozens per day.
When I cleaned house and deleted a lot of spare blogs on the site (like, you know, the Ironworks blog, and OpenMind project), I did find that the spammers took advantage of those while I wasn’t watching. B%$*#@ds.
Another thought occurred to me today: If I set up Comments for Links, would I have a Recent Comments section for the Links, as well? Hm.
Remember your own tag line: Less is more.
Hm. Dunstan has his links blog* set up such that a the number of comments follows after the link itself. If you click on it, it takes you to a seperate page for comments, which is nice.
Again, though, I’d have to be careful to close the comments on each link after a couple of days. (Then again, maybe not.)**
* http://www.1976design.com/blog — click on “b-marks” at the top right.
** http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=mt%20automatically%20close%20comments&btnG=Google+Search
Oh, I should also note that this kind of linkage may have accessibility issues: http://www.kennsarah.net/archives/2003/08/23/the_road_to_section_508/index.php
Dude,
Are you saying I’ve asked for too many changes?!?! (“I Want to Be Here” link)
Tell me it aint so, Danny…
Scott
Scott–no way, man. I just thought it would be nice to have so many good clients that I could pass on bad clients. You guys have been totally great!
Phew! For a moment there I thought we were one of the bad ones you wanted to pass on!