blog comment communities

I once told Anil about a blog entry I posted regarding Michael Jackson that ended up becoming innundated with comments from people who have strong feelings about the King of Pop. Anil says that most everyone he knows has a blog posting that has become a community.

Since then I've thought it would be nice to try and put together a list of these accidental spontaneous communities. Today BoingBoing points to another one: Boing Boing: Fools think Bill Gates is reading about their pleas for money.

Gadgetopia's Deane Barker sez: "Check out the comments on this thread. I posted this note about Bill Gates' philanthropy. There are dozens of comments from people who apparently think Bill Gates posted it and will give them money. It's fascinating to read -- what are these people thinking? "

I haven't read all the comments, but just going by my own experience I can predict that there will be people pretending to be Bill Gates who dole out sincere gratitude and advice on behalf of the billionaire and the comments from the confused visitors will be just a little bit sad in their foolishness.

Comments

[gen]

The three "unintended communities" on my blog include a post on Japanese racism, a post on the illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, and a post on Samoan tautaus (tatoos.)

[Sean]

This is definitely one of my favorites, at Parker Thompson's site:
http://www.parkert.com/mypics/spain/flamenco/

(believe it or not he's actually edited out a ton of them. not sure why he would bother...)

[Boris Anthony]

From Joi's site, the two most active entries, comments wise are:
1- about GPS jammers (people asking for diagrams)
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2002/12/29/low_cost_gps_jammer.html
2- MP3 player for Nokia 6600 (the post was about moblogging.. go figure)
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/02/12/moblogging_from_the_nokia_6600_with_atom_api.html

There is also an ongoing raging debate about the health risks of Diet Coke with quite regular comments. And others... ;)

[sean]

This is not a HUGE unintended community but it is a very strange one:
http://www.cheesebikini.com/archives/000206.html

Note that the first comment on this post didn't appear until more than a year after the post appeared, and now a whole slew of comments continues to be posted there, the latest appearing this morning.

They all come from separate IP addresses so I don't think they're from the same person (w/ the exception of two people who each commented twice).

My theory is that with every new boneheaded comment along these lines, there are more search terms added that will attract boneheads googling for misspelled childish sex terms... Thereby attracting more comments of the same type.

-Sean

[Dav]

Just found another one over at danah's blog. This one is full of mutants.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2001/02/26/mutant.html