Call it Web 2.0, call it what you will – but one unique feature of today's network communications is the possibility of readers and content producers interacting with each other via comment boxes and other even more geeky mechanisms. Our evolving understanding of how these technologies are actually used by our readers has recently caused us to re-think the way we run this site.
Here at Cordite we've had a love-hate relationship with the comments section – way back in 2001/2002, Cordite readers could comment on the site (via our Blogger newsblog, originally set up and maintained by uber-web-guru Carlie Lazar aka Hot Soup Girl).
Then, when we moved to Movable Type, commenting (and moderating) became a lot easier, although as we soon realised, so too did flame wars, crankiness and general dumbness. Still, we thought, that's the spirit of the Internet – free and open discussion, within limits. Not that there was much of that, due partly to the limits we placed on the kinds of posts where we allowed comments but more importantly to the significant problems spam posed for the security of our site.
By the time we migrated our site to the WordPress open source platform in 2006, specific improvements in spam capture and verification had made open comments a more realistic option for us again. As in the past, we restricted the number and kinds of posts in response to which it was possible to make comments. Basically, this meant newsblog posts were open to comments, while poems, reviews and features were not.
In a way, this might seem counter-intuitive: to allow comments on what is perhaps the least interesting type of content available on the site, while restricting the ability of Cordite readers to respond to the actual creative work.
Our reasoning, in hindsight, was that opening poems up to comment might well provoke a whole bunch of smarmy and anonymous comments from enemies of the poets with passive-aggressive tendencies. Of course, this is more of a doomsday scenario than one based in reality, and yet until this issue, we have not allowed a single comment in response to a poem by one of our contributors.
For a magazine operating on the intertubes for the past eight years, this strikes us now as slightly Web 1.0. Or perhaps, if we're really honest, Web 0.1. All of which is no real explanation for the sudden reversal of this policy which, we must admit, was totally accidental on our part.
While we deliberately allowed comments on Stuart Cooke's excellent editorial for the current Pastoral issue, it was only inadvertantly that we discovered we'd also made Jen Jewel Brown's poem commentable. It wasn't until a day or so later when the first comments began to hit the fan, as it were, that we realised our error.
Of course, looking at such things as errors denies the possibility that they might also provide opportunities: and so we have decided as of now to open up comments on poems, with the poets' permission of course. Beginning with this issue, we'll therefore make comments available for a limited time.
And so here we are, crawling towards greater interactivity, in the spirit of some kind of transparency and good humour. Please consider reading some of the comments already made on Jen Jewel Brown's poem, or moving on to consider the works of Ron Pretty, Peter O'Mara, Rachel Thompson, Sue Stanford, Joyce Parkes, David Prater and hopefulyl more over the coming days and weeks.
One reminder: those of you with long memories will naturally recall Cordite's Comments Policy, written by our afore-mentioned blog editor Carlie Lazar. We think it's so good that we have left it unchanged and it applies today just as much as it did when it was first drawn up.
We again ask all Cordite commenters to read and adhere to this policy, especially these lines:
We welcome comments that are insightful, helpful, clarifying, instructional, informative, sporty, boring, flirtatious, disdainful, grumpy, or about sticky buns (the ones with icing and coconut on top).
We frown upon personal attacks, offensive language, inappropriate linking and comments that vilify on the basis of race, religion, sexuality, gender or disability. Comments such as these may be subject to deletion.
Please note that our finger does not hover over the 'delete' button. Rather, we like to think of ourselves as free-thinking bon vivants who will only get on your case if you really cheese us off.
Or, to put it simply: play nice.
