Via the Professor. Some fundamentals about “the Kaboodle” from Betsy Phillips’ blog
The people who come after the blog post? They are commenters. They are not bloggers. Calling them bloggers is like calling everyone on a bus the bus driver. No, there are entertaining people who ride the bus and scary people who ride the bus and annoying people who ride the bus. There are even people who will try to make the bus go some place the driver doesn’t want to take it. But that doesn’t make any of them the bus driver.
Same with commenters. They can be smart, entertaining, scary, annoying, or even hijacking. They do not write the blog. Some blogs don’t even have commenters.
And more importantly in the Internet era, not all commenters comment on blogs. They comment anywhere online someone has given a space for comments, which could be on op-eds written by Mr. Bart or on news stories about Mr. Bart, for example.
Do some online commenters suck? Not any of you guys, of course (well, OK, a few of you), but hell, yes. There are three things all bloggers do when it comes to commenters: 1. brag about the awesome ones; 2. daydream about making out with the attractive ones; and 3. rail against the fuckers.