Lean processes are great.
Short. To the point. Productive. Less waste, lots of product or service, if that's your thing.
But what is lean blogging? It's the application of lean manufacturing principles to blogging.
Hasn't this been around for a while? Yes, we didn't invent lean blogging (although there are currently only 246 results for the query "lean blogging").
So what's the point of this post?
Most of the theoretical modeling for lean blogging is focused on the production of posts. Streamlined processes for capturing ideas, formulating drafts, creating a high quality backlog of custom content, reducing the costs and the on-time publication of posts.
But what about comments?
Could comments in fact be a form of muda?
Perhaps.
That is point of this post.
If you know the commenter personally, they probably already have your email, cell phone number and home address. They may even have left something under your door mat or in your desk drawer or in your locker. If you don't already know the commenter personally there is a non-zero chance that the commenter is a troll, a lynkbaiter, a mono-lexical commenter, a newbie, a crypto-commenter, an obscenophile, a spammenter or commentbot or inadvertently hit the comment button.
Consider then a comment-less blog.
Why?
It's less work.
No navigating the troubled waters of rejection. No creepy random hostility. No wondering why people submit one word, misspelled comments.
But what about the comments you look forward to?
They already have your email. They might even txt msg you if it's urgent.
Now there are good, decent, well-meaning, thoughtful, engaging, balanced commenters out there, but let's be honest that the chance of attracting one of them a away from an existing blog or forum or web site is pretty low. Think the gripe about all the good men of a certain age being married or gay. Talented, informed and tactful commenters without their own blog or web site are generally in short supply.
So maybe clearing the comment queue then becomes one less thing to do.
One less open loop.
No arguing amongst the readers. No moderating the chasm between the thin skinned and the thick headed. No wondering why your readers can't just get along.
But what about the community? Where is the social network? Let's not go there.
Yet.
But for the sake of argument let's consider that everyone and their grandmother is more than willing to help with the sharing, linking, discussion and foruming of fresh content. If it's worth discussing, there's probably already a place out there to discuss it.
Remember, everyone else also wants your audience too.
So if you want to keep focused on creating content, it might be worth considering if comments are muda.
If you want to discuss this idea - take it elsewhere.
Like leanblog.org (they should know their muda) - with the post: Blog Comments are NOT muda.
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