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Who will snark the snarkers?
It took a chance meeting with a regular human, but Gawker recently discovered that some blogs allow people to comment. Gawker thought about this and said Really? All of them?, and instituted an invitation-only comment system. And then invited only their friends.
If you had something to say, but are upset that as a mere prole you have no forum, worry no more. Through the wonder of RSS, friend-of-Stay Free Jim Hanas has created Gawker Talker, a headline aggregator that is comment-enabled for the common man.
This better get me a fucking invitation.
Posted by Charles Star on 09/30/2005 | Permalink
Comments
I certainly don't blame them for limiting comments but the invitation-only plan is retarded. Why not just filter the comments? (They have interns, don't they?) And then they could find a technical means of waiving filtering for people who have already demonstrated that they have something worth saying.
Posted by: carrie | Sep 30, 2005 11:36:02 AM
This overstates the case. As an editor, I had a question about a word usage in an entry on one of their sites; later that day, I got a friendly note back explaining the usage and an invitation to become a commenter. I suspect anyone could get one by dropping them a note and sounding fairly lucid. Certainly that theory wouldn't be difficult for you folks to test.
Posted by: bob s. | Oct 2, 2005 12:09:47 AM
In line with what bob s. says, the sour grapes, bunched panties and green eyes of envy shine though in this hack. Seems like only a handful of people are upset and for very little reason.
If you can't even take a second to e-mail the folks at Gawker and ask politely, then why should you be given the right to post? As someone who manages a few popular websites I can attest that waking up in the morning and facing a pile of comments and flame-wars that happen while I was sleeping is a pain to say the least.
Gawker and any media comany does not owe anyone the privledge of a voice. But I do think Gawker's approach is quite admirable and a step in the right direction.
Posted by: Jonas | Oct 2, 2005 4:02:21 PM
