The continuing discussion that my post on Pub Politics II has generated is significant in a couple of ways. This comment thread, as opposed to some of the comment threads from the earlier days of the blog, is less noise and more meat. Call it Casually Choosing Civility if you will.
Anyway....
The difference between then and now is that since June I've been using the Diqus commenting widget. The level of dialog in my wide open, any anonymous comment allowed, no moderation days was steadily deteriorating. People whom I respect were beginning to tell me that they were no longer commenting because of the vitriol.
Still, I resisted while also checking out what others were doing. After first discovering Disqus on HoCo Rising, I asked Columbia uber geek, James Howard, what he thought. Once James gave it a thumbs up I convinced him to help me install it. I am the antitheses of the uber geek.
The Tales of Two Cities commenter's reacted swiftly. They were not happy. Commenting dropped down to a trickle.
Readership on the other hand continued to climb. In June Tales of Two Cities had 14,894 visitors. It July it was 14,954, in August, 16,155 and last month it was 18,972.
Now the commenting is back up to pre Disqus levels and the blog is back in balance, better than ever.
Thank you and a big wag of the wordbones tail to all who read and comment here.
