Blog comments
The situation you find yourself in is called Warnock’s Dilemma, named after Bryan Warnock, one of the early Usenet pioneers. He said that silence can be interpreted in one of five different ways:
- The post is obviously correct, and so well researched that nothing more needs to be said.
- The post is complete and utter nonsense but no one wants to waste the time or energy to point it out.
- No one read the post.
- No one understood the post and thought it would be worth their time to ask for further clarification.
- No one cares about the post.
After reading Ryan Holiday’s book, Trust Me I’m Lying, I’m not sure that it is possible to incentivize comments without falling into the Buzzfeed trap of writing content with high emotional valence in order to drive engagement. I think that the way to improve one’s writing is to seek out people and ask them to give comments (and incentivize this, either through social means or even via financial means, if you can afford it). Relying on one’s writing alone to draw commenters sets up an incentive gradient that leads straight to Buzzfeed, and I’m not sure that there’s really any way out of it.
– www.greaterwrong.com/posts/GHBLFPDhzeSQHx2eM/writing-that-provokes-comments