comments

One of the more important aspects of social media is the emphasis on user generated content that blends with community discourse. As people have noted, many comments are negative. Some of the comments are downright scathing. As such, many users in social networks tread carefully, and I really cannot blame them. Whereas some of us are so much less anonymous than many commenters, we’re bound to feel vulnerable since nearly all of our cards are on the table.

There’s also the element of being able to vote comments up (for agreement) or down (for disagreement). Many community-based sites operate in this way (and for the sites that don’t, I am often compelled to search for a + sign or a thumbs up sign so that I can vote my approval). A few weeks ago, a user contributed to a respected blog with a comment that said that giving a thumbs down is negative and reflects a natural homogeneity within the specific community. The comment in question was critical of a blog post but clearly lacked sufficient information in its criticism, if only to say that the commenter did not enjoy the post by the poster. This is fine, and in general, criticism is quite valuable, but criticism needs to be backed up.