Lonely Lion

I’ve been adding code here and there to the fabulously non-featured tastebud-project, and have been debating whether or not to include comments as a feature. This morning, the Freakonomics guy posted this bit about “who comments?” It reminded me that I need to make a decision about comments.

tastebud-project, bless its little heart, is not really a full featured blogging package, it’s just a Django app that I kept reusing and decided to formalize a bit and release. The two projects that led to it (Tastebud and Victim of Time) don’t allow comments, simply because the people running both sites (Camri and I for Tastebud and Brett and Todd for VoT) don’t want to manage a bunch of comments. My previous side-project as message board maker for Chicago improvisers made me really dislike managing communities. A recent post by the CherryPy guy sums it up nicely, “You’re writing a community tool with a moderator mode. Do you really want to be a bouncer for the rest of your life?”

I allow comments on this blog, which is clearly a huge deal, as I get hundreds and hundreds of comments (I don’t, I’m being sarcastic). I had them turned off for a very long time, and never really felt bad about it. Comments, in general, are a nice way to build a community, but really…the side projects I like to work on aren’t typically “community” projects, they’re more like publishing projects. I want to write something, for you. I’m not necessarily trying to start a dialogue. Does that sound dickish? It’s not meant to be. I know it sounds very Web 1.0-ish, but…hey…it’s the truth. You can’t argue with the truth! Right? Uh…right?

So, in short, as of right this minute, I’m not going to include comments on the awesome tastebud-project. This decision is subject to change at a moments notice. The good thing is, if you actually use tastebud-project (why the hell would you do that?), it’s easy enough to add comments, as Django bakes them right in. So…comment away suckers.