Q&A Friday #92: The Drop Off In The Number Of Comments.

08 Aug, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Question: “I have noticed that, over the past year, there seems to have been a precipitous drop in the number of comments posted at RWN. What is the reason for that? Is it due to more aggressive comment moderating? Is it due to restricted RWN user account registration? Is it because of the existence of the forum section? Or is it some combination of all of these? What I am most curious to know is if Occam’s Razor applies: fewer comments because there are fewer visitors to RWN.” — huckupchuck

Answer: Comments have dropped significantly, but it started when RWN turned into a group blog.

I think the primary difference is that previously, RWN had 6 posts per day that were up by 7 AM or so and those posts stayed up all day long. Now typically, RWN has 10-12 posts per day that are spread out across the day. I think the sheer volume of posts has kept the comments from getting as concentrated as they did when RWN was a solo blog.

There are also a couple of other minor factors that may play a role.

* Between the kids being out of school and people going out nights instead of staying in on their computers, RWN takes a small traffic hit every summer.

* RWN has a Forum that is probably draining off some posts.