One thing that came up in the recent discussions about comments that turned into a tangent in my mind is how email fits into the picture.
If people have thoughts about a blog post they can share with the author by email (and two people did just that with my last post). There are some advantages to this. First of all is that both parties almost certainly already have email accounts, as opposed to the ever shifting list of social media platforms and chat apps to contact people with. Moreover, any email service that’s worthwhile is going to have spam filtering measures built in. Over here in static site world, being able to take advantage of that by just posting an address rather than complicating the website is a very attractive proposition.
The downside, of course, is that emails are not the same as comments. They are one-to-one, rather than a public conversation. It might also be worth considering that sending an email is a different context than publicly making a comment.
Something that struck a chord in this discussion was Bhagpuss’s remark that cold emailing a stranger can feel actually uncomfortable. I find that relatable. I have my email address on here because I want to actively invite you to send me a message. Half the point of this post is to reiterate that. Which is not to say that I disagree. Plenty of other people extend the same invitation, but I seldom email them about their blog posts. Perhaps I ought to make an effort to do that more.
One final note: when I posted my email address I expected spam. But I have been pleasantly surprised by how little there has been compared to the genuine messages I’ve received. My expectations were low, but it is still nice to have them surpassed, at least for a time.
There was one more final, final thing I wanted to say but I’ve forgotten what it was. Oh well.