Blogging Trends that are Annoying Me
For whatever reason, in the blogosphere, people tend to start doing what everyone else is doing.
Sometimes this is good. Sometimes this is bad.
What comes to mind currently are two trends that are really, really annoying me.
The first is the removal of dates from blog posts and comments. If you are a regular reader of a particular blog, you have a general idea of when something was posted because you’ll recognize that, hey, that post wasn’t there yesterday! But, if you are finding the blog through a search, you have no idea how old a particular blog post is or even if the blog is still updated. Is the information you are reading three hours old or three years old? If you’re looking for a product review, is the information you’re reading still relevant? Or not? You have no way of knowing if there are no dates on the posts.
Jeanne Dininni had a post on this subject on her blog (which is dated) last week: “Undated Blog Posts: Evergreen Content or Thorn in Your Reader’s Side?”
Anyway, as such, those undated blogs are pretty much useless and probably best ignored.
The second thing is Disqus. I hate the thing. It makes leaving comments on blogs more difficult. Bloggers who use it are pretty much putting comments on their blogs at the mercy of a third-party. And, when that third-party is down or having issues, your blog is going to be affected.
In fact, a couple blogs I visited today had that problem. On one, I had to rewrite and repost my comment because the first one got lost somewhere in Disqus world. Also, on those same blogs, I frequently see a half-loaded taskbar that says “Loading comments…” that just stops and never displays comments. I sometimes have to reload a page two or three times just to finally see the comments, or to verify that my comment actually got posted.
And, every time I leave a comment, I get an eMail asking me to confirm my subscription to the comment thread. I don’t want a subscription. I don’t need an extra eMail cluttering up my eMailbox. I just want to leave a freakin’ comment.
It’s stuff like that that turns readers off and away. In my opinion, Disqus gets in the way of commenting and turns it into a chore.
Time is too precious to waste on jumping through hoops for no benefit.
I agree about disqus. I’m using, have been for a couple of weeks to test it out on a couple of sites. Not real comfortable with comments being controlled offsite. Not to mention there’s been a huge impact in the speed of things.
Don’t agree with the date thing. But then I’m not really writing content that is time sensitive. If I was I could definitely see a need to have the date.
Ahhh, now I know what Disqus comments are and I have to agree with you 100%. Anything that makes it more trouble to leave a comment or becomes another thing I have to subscribe to is just too much trouble.
I hear you! I also removed Disqus from one of my business blogs. It’s annoying.
I also removed the date on some of my blogger blogs to make it looks like a static page. Those sites won’t change a lot and are primary for information purpose only.
I do see people coming to my site and never pay attention on the date of the blog post. So they left some comment on “It doesn’t work!” Give me a break, the post was in 2007. Of course, the solution will not work in 2010.
Back on track to read your blog over the weekend!