Comments are Not All Crap
Shared stories as a byproduct of online communities
— Stories can be found in comments
Everyone agrees online comments are terrible, but I keep reading them. That’s because, within the right communities, there are often a few comments that are especially good. When reading comments, I look for a certain type of comment, in which a reader relates a personal story or anecdote in such a way that the comment itself can stand alone outside the context of the thread. For instance, in this MetaFilter post about the twenty-third perfect game pitched in the Major League, one user shared his experience taking his son to the game. Even though I don’t follow baseball and initially wasn’t entirely familiar with the concept of a perfect game, I found the story a compelling moment in the life of a father.
Why do I single out stories? Stories shared in comments offer a lot more than others. While most comments, even good ones, are ephemeral, readers are much more likely to reread and share “story” comments. They make sense outside the context of the rest of a discussion thread. At the same time, reading them along with the discussion thread often serves to improve understanding of the thread. Since people are already reading and responding to comments a good story comment receives some great responses.
— Good communities foster storytelling
Communities encourage storytelling by having both a form of identity and a critical mass of users. People share their personal stories in the comment threads of a variety of different places, such as MetaFilter, Quora, Something Awful and Reddit. People share stories on these sites because they are communities. This is in contrast to the comments section of Yahoo! news, YouTube or CNN, which have massive users but no sense of community.
— User identity results in better stories
People who share stories online recognize that once they hit submit, the personal experience they are sharing shapes their identity. Once users feel ownership of their accounts, a number of them will proceed to construct their identity by sharing their own personal experiences. As users began to recognize and identify with each other, the amount of sharing increases. Because of this, sites which employ a static identity, allowing users to build a reputation, have more users sharing personal stories.
Sites that provide a way for users to write comments using a static name have way better comment quality than ones that let you submit content using a different alias each time. But identity goes further than the use of an alias or real name; people have to feel ownership of their user account. In order to feel ownership, the user must be able to build a reputation. On MetaFilter, being the victim of a cutting one liner by a user named “quonsar” doesn’t mean as much if nobody knows who “quonsar” is. Since the bulk of a user’s reputation is based on their prior submissions, the ability to review a user’s comment history is an important step to building true identity for a community that shares stories. A user, faced with the knowledge that other users can quickly get a sense the character of any user, is often driven to participate with their reputation in mind.
— Critical mass further encourages storytelling
Once an online forum reaches a critical mass of users, coupled with some kind of online identity or reputation, the resulting community becomes a great source of personal stories. With a larger community comes a larger pool of experiences to draw from. You find stories from people of all backgrounds: backpackers, bartenders, people who grapple with monsters and sometimes, due to the sheer numbers, one person with all three traits.
Somewhat counterintuitively, the larger the community gets, the more people are willing to share about themselves. People desire an audience and a larger community provides that audience. More people will read a story presented as a comment on Metafilter or Reddit than the same story written as a blog post.
“I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” — Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby
When people tell complete strangers about their life, they sometimes include interesting details that they might otherwise leave out. Since, much like small towns, everyone knows everyone in small online communities, small communities do not provide a high enough level of anonymity to facilitate all types of stories. Larger communities, especially ones made of users with diverse views, allow users to share experiences that may not be appropriate elsewhere. Furthermore, one person’s anecdote often spurs other people with similar or related experiences to chime in with their own story.
— Reddit, Quora and Medium actively facilitate storytelling
While storytelling within communities starts out mostly organically, some communities have identified the value of stories and have sections of their sites dedicated to sharing personal experiences. On Reddit and Quora, threads are started to facilitate sharing specific types of stories. For instance, check out this /r/AskReddit thread about stupid criminals, or this one on Quora about bizarre job interviews.
While not a community with online comments, Medium seems exceptionally positioned to become a destination where people go to read and share stories. Users have an identity and are able to create collections of stories about pretty much any topic. Because of this, interesting stories can regularly be found in collections like Coffee Tales.
— A few of my favorite comments
I mentioned earlier that I read comments. I actually read a lot of comments. I recognize not everyone does, so Margaret Ippolito and I have been keeping track of interesting comments and stories we come across. If you’d like to read some of the comments I’ve liked, you can read them at http://blorpy.com/ or follow @blorpy to see updates.
