Comments vs. posts
I’m thrilled about the discussion generated by recent phonoloblog posts by Travis Bradley and Marc van Oostendorp. For those phonoloblog readers who may be reading this blog in the “traditional” way, simply checking every so often for new posts: comments on particular posts are not as obvious as they could be from the main page — especially new comments on older posts — so you may be missing some interesting discussion.
I suggest two things to remedy this. One is for readers to be made aware of the fact that this blog has two RSS feeds: one for posts and another for comments. Subscribe to both (either with your browser, if it supports RSS, or with an RSS reader of some sort) and you’ll never miss any of the discussion here on phonoloblog. (You can also subscribe to feeds for comments on individual posts, but that’s hardly necessary, I think.)
I address my other suggestion to individual comment authors. If you find that your comment is particularly involved, it probably deserves to be a separate post. (If you’re not already a phonoloblog contributor, it’s easy to join.) As long as the separate post has a prominent link to the original post (or posts) it comments on, then it’s easy to follow the discussion. I think I have things set up such that a post A that links to a previous post B will automatically create a “pingback” link from B to A, but if you want to be double sure that folks who read B find their way to A, then you can also post a quick comment on B with a link to A.
