Led astray by a comment on another blog, Kevin pondered the existence of a lefty-righty blog comment divide:
Is that true? I’d peg the top six conservative/libertarian/pro-war sites to be Instapundit, Sullivan, Lileks, LGF, Volokh, and Den Beste. Only one of those six allows comments (although perhaps LGF makes up for all the rest?)
On the liberal side, I’d guess that the half-dozen most popular sites are Atrios, KOS, Marshall, me, Yglesias, and Max. Five out of six allow comments.
I can’t say for sure that my dozen choices are the right ones, but I’m probably not too far off the mark and the difference in comment friendliness is indeed remarkably clear cut. I wonder what accounts for this, or if it’s just some weird coincidence?
My post yesterday about comment sections on blogs was just an offhand thing, but Stentor Danielson decided to put it to the test. Today he claims that contrary to the small sample of blogs I used, a more, um, rigorous survey shows that 52% of lefty blogs have comments while 62% of righty blogs have comments.
You can inspect his methodology here, and since he has comments himself, you can also comment at his site on his comment methodology. (Links in the original. )
It’s amazing how quickly we can fact check each other–and, apparently, ourselves–in the blogosphere.
Both “sides” seem to think their side argues more honestly, gently, and in a greater spirit of openness. These attitudes seldom hold up under empirical scrutiny. Congrats to Kevin for his quick turnaround on this one.
