MyDD :: This should be fun

Today, in response to my stagant right-wing blogopshere post, I received this email from Polipundit:

I respond to your post: http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=8279

BTW, you may not know this, but Jerome Armstrong and I jumped on the Howard Dean bandwagon very early, and for very different reasons. In early 2003, we used to trade hopeful polls about how well Dean was doing in, say, Iowa.

It's a pity Dean couldn't be your presidential candidate. But I'm really, really, glad he's your party chairman. I hope you keep him there forever :-)

Here are exceprts from the post:

Liberal Chris Bowers argues that conservative blogs have less traffic than liberal blogs because liberal blogs allow reader comments:(...)

First, I'll note that polipundit.com gets above 200,000 pages views per week, using the BlogAds numbers that Bowers uses. In fact, we're in the top 20 conservative political blogs by any reckoning. And we do allow comments. In fact, the four "guest" bloggers on this blog all started out as regular commenters. And other commenters have gone on to start their own highly successful blogs, like Scott Elliott's Election Projection.

So why don't most other conservative blogs allow comments? Because liberals are jerks. If a conservative blog allows comments, it is immediately overrun by juvenile, illiterate, liberal hecklers who ruin the comments section. We here at polipundit.com have been fighting this ever since I turned on comments, and only ceaseless vigilance has allowed us to keep the comments section open. If a larger conservative/libertarian blog, like InstaPundit, were to start a Comments section, then the blogger would have to spend every waking moment policing liberal trolls.

So the net takeaway is this: If you believe Bowers' reasons and polipundit.com's experience, liberal bloggers have more traffic because liberals have succeeded in heckling conservative blog readers into silence.

What this blogger seems to lack in imagination when it comes to blogging platforms (ever heard of Scoop?), s/he seems to more than make up for in victimization. I commented on the thread:

If you will notice, my definition of a true community site is actually one that allows not just comments, but also allows users to write diaries / articles / polls. Of course some right-wing blogs have comments. In fact, eight or nine of the top sixteen in terms of traffic have comments. that, however, was not the definition I was using. The seven sites I listed as "community" sites allow their readers to do a lot more than just post comments. If I was only using comments as the definition of a community site, than nearly every blog would fit the bill.

Also, MyDD was overrun by trolls in late 2002, which eventually caused its collapse from the top of the liberal blog traffic rankings. The same was happening to Dailykos in the summer of 2003. However, shutting off comments is not the only way to prevent from being overrun by trolls. Its called Scoop-the blogger platform that has allowed the liberal blogosphere to pull away from the conservative blogosphere in terms of traffic. Redstate.org has already figured this out. If you would take a moment to stop blaming liberals for oppressing conservative bloggers, you might be able to figure it out as well.

I don't even know why I am bothering with this. I can't imagine that I would accomplish anything except encouraging more conservatives to use Scoop, which would very quickly allow them to become more competitive with liberal bloggers. I'd rather not have that. Still, so far in the thread, I have found nothing but resistance to the idea of letting people post diaries and form a real community. I guess the simple fact that liberals use Scoop will make conservatives resist it into infinity.