Broken Windows of Blogs

What I’m alluding to is the famed Broken Windows Theory which is attributed to Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist. In 1969 Mr. Zimbardo conducted an experiment that went as follows:

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by “vandals” within ten minutes of its “abandonment.”

The first to arrive were a family — father, mother, and young son — who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began — windows were smashed, parts torn off, the upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult “vandals” were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites.

The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the “vandals” appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

More often you see this pattern with abandoned buildings and entire rundown neighborhoods. However, the same fate befalls abandoned blogs.

Ever wonder why some individual would bother leaving a meaningless one-line comment? Have you ever had one of those “This is cooool^^^^^” comments? They might not be advertising the latest medical accomplishments in the field of (*ahem*) customer satisfaction. Simply innocent nonsense, right?

What happens is they probe you, and if you don’t react quickly enough, they’ll come back for more. Often times the meaningless comment is unique enough to search on MSN or Google and see which blogs are safe enough to flood with even more junk.

The minute you open your blog or journal for comments, it’s your responsibility to monitor what’s being posted. It’s even more important to nuke junk as soon as it appears.

Milan, I think of this post whenever I see a "discussion" such as the one today at http://www.fivesevensix.com/articles/2005/07/06/calendargrid-1-0-1#comments

Summary:
Day 1: 1 valid post
Day 8: 1 valid post
Day 129: 1 spam post
Day 141: 1 spam post
Day 146: 1 spam posts
Day 157: 2 spam posts
Day 158: 9 spam posts
Day 160: 2 spam posts

Since not every post will generate feedback forever, it makes sense to use a built-in, install a plugin, or develop an automatic expiration feature that closes comments without blog owner interaction. The damage is done well after the conversation has ended.

I've thought about closing comments to posts and articles automatically, but some of them keep receiving good comments and grow into mini-Knowledge Base articles.

For example, my post on trouble with SourceSafe generated a helpful discussion where people contributed valuable suggestions.

On the other hand, I'm ready to close comments to my article on the weather control because some people treat it as a discussion forum, and I've had to remove a few comments because of that.

It's a give-and-take. I think if a person can't monitor comments for some reason, he/she should just close them until better days.