BuzzMachine

More comments on comments
: Some interesting comments on the comments on comments below.

: EvilPundit says, quite rightly, that comments, too, should have permalinks to others can link directly to them. He points us to detailed if chatty instructions here. I’ll need to steady my coding hand with a few shots before undertaking this but it looks righteous.

: Lisa Williams says what we have here is a parallel development alongside the blogosphere: the commentsphere. I’m not sure I agree that it’s separate; comments are part of blogs; they are posts on posts. But to do what she wants, we still have to add the ability to permalink comments. [Anil, et al, add that to your list...]

: UPDATE: This just in from Anil: “As far as comment permalinks go, I’ve got them on my site right now, and I think we’re updating the MT and TypePad templates to include them by default, but we’ve all talked about it internally and are strongly in favor.” As usual, one step ahead….

The gear-shifted librarians
: Some NJ librarians took their hair down, got tattoos, and posed with Harleys for a calendar.

From Iran
: Pedram, the Eyeranian, points us to pictures from the Tehran airport of the masses greeting their Nobel peace laureate.

For and against
: Daniel Drezner is refereeing a debate on the U.S. war in Iraq.

Sniper blog
: The Gazette in Maryland has a sniper-trial blog. (via Lost Remote)

Comments on comments
: Blogger Tom Mangan has been influencing other blogs via their comments. Mangen positively inspired Jay Rosen to unleash his pent-up, still-jelling views on FoxNews (Jay told me about it over lunch yesterday and, voila, there was his post a few hours later). Mangen inspired Tim Porter to take an idea a step further on the Californian election.

And that’s just one example of the gems buried in the comments of so many blogs (those with the courage to open them up).

: I love my comments. They are a cafe, a community, a klatsch. People bring wonderful ideas, links, and punchlines there (just check out the string of interactive DNA on mascot names here). They are, in a sense, a whole host of blogs within the blog.

I try not to involve myself in the comments too much since I have my say here. I’ve killed only a handful of posts over the years (bad words, off-topic, personal attacks). I sometimes join in a conversation (sometimes to defend myself, sometimes to parry). But usually, I just like to listen.

Still, comments and interactivity of all forms do take care and feeding. At my day job, we have people who repond to alerts from the users and kill bad posts (they were quite busy after the Yankees/Sox brawl the other night). But when you look at the whole, the bad apples are few. It’s well worth having comments and forums, for this medium is a conversation.

: I’m saying all this because I just saw that blogger Tom Coates of PlasticBag is starting a blog about managing community. It seems a bit abstract and talky (“…children and teenagers are using the affordances and limitations of social software and community spaces as mechanisms to help them assert their dominance (often through bullying) in schools’ social shark tanks…”), and controlling. It’s about moderating discussion. I believe that most discussions don’t need moderation; they need content and value to draw the cafe customers; they need janitors to sweep up the trolls; they need an occasional reminder to behave from a higher authority. But, in general, what’s so wonderful about this great online conversation is that it moderates itself. The joy is in the listening.

Even spammers have feelings
: IWantMedia discovers that the Direct Marketing Association is offended by an Orlando Sentinel story that called them “spammers.”

PC is everywhere, even at a convention of junk-mailers, phone-botherers, and, pardon me, spammers. Said the Sentinel:

Don’t expect them to stop.

The folks at SnoreFix and The Money Maker Plan, and their marketing brethren are making way too much money to stop the suppertime phone calls and endless e-mails.

A direct marketing executive wonders in the DMA story whether the reporter knows that his newspaper is sold through direct marketing. True, but the reporter shouldn’t care.

What’s funny about this is that these people are getting offended. That’s everybody’s PR tactic today: If somebody says something you don’t like about you or someone in your camp, say you’re “offended” and that will to stop them because being “offensive” is the cardinal sin of the age.

Hey, it’s just an opinion. Everybody needs to grow a thicker skin again.

: And while we’re talking about direct marketing, I just got my new sprint phone and the next night I got a damned spam call from Sprint.

“I’m on the do not call list!” I warned her.

“But we’re not trying to sell you anything,” she said with a nya-nya-nya voice.

“Well don’t call me again or you won’t ever sell me anything again. Put me on your do-not-call list, damnit!”

Slam.

By the way, have I said lately that Sprint Sucks?

The real story
: There’s something wrong with this picture…

Today, USA Today reports that ABC News and Time are joining to create “a series of in-depth reports in November on how the war in Iraq is affecting ordinary Iraqis.” Says ABC News President David Westin:

”I’ve been troubled for some time about the reporting of all news organizations on the situation in Iraq,” he wrote. ”We often seem to be captive to the individual dramatic incident — and those of us in television subject to one that comes with great video.

”ABC News is now going to address this conspicuous lacking in the reporting to date,” Westin wrote. ”Our goal is essentially to conduct an audit across several parts of Iraq, gauging the quality of life for the average citizen.”

Now on the one hand, you might want to clap Westin on the back and say, good for you, sir, finally getting deeper into the story.

But here’s what’s wrong with this:

They shouldn’t have to launch a damned task force to do this reporting.

They should be doing this reporting every day of the week.

What life is like in Iraq is a good and essential story and most organizations haven’t been reporting it. They are, instead, as Westin says, reporting the “dramatic incident” — the bombings, the deaths — and, of course, they should be reporting that. But they should be doing more.

They should have their reporters who are there out wandering the streets, meeting the people, finding the stories from all perspectives of life in a new Iraq.

You don’t need a damned “audit” to figure out why that isn’t being done and to fix it.

The stories aren’t being done for one of two simple reasons: The reporters aren’t reporting it or the producers/editors aren’t letting them through.

And everybody’s sticking with the pack: The pack of reporters reporting the same stories, the pack of networks and news organizations running the same stories.

You fix that by having assigning editors tell reporters to get out and get stories about what it’s like on the ground there; bring the sense of the place home; give me many interviews, many perspectives, many stories.

This big “in-depth report” strategy is really just a PR move to get ABC off the hook for not doing this.

And it will skew the story. It presumes that one series of reports will tell the real story and then we can forget it and go back to business as usual. Wrong.

You get the real story by reporting the real story every damned day of the week.

: UPDATE: Here’s a Gallup poll of people in Iraq.

The Gallup poll found that 71 percent of the capital city’s residents felt U.S. troops should not leave in the next few months. Just 26 percent felt the troops should leave that soon.