As the Internet gets bigger, so does the number of users I'll never understand.
I'm intruding a bit on a similar post already made by Steven at AOV but it still blows my mind everything I see this. I have seen all kinds of junk posts in a forum I moderate but for this purpose I'm going to focusing on Weblogs replies. The issue is the number of replies are increasing but the number of quality replies decrease with questionable content. Stuff that could make anybody scratch their head for hours. Being specific to this site it has recently been the WWE post, Duke Nukem and of course I'll never forget the Idol thread that eventually had to be shut down. I have seen this on many other sites and the more popular the blog, the worse it gets (celebrity blogs are ridiculous). Picking on AOV again, the Bill Gates Letters are extreme examples.
Anonymous names, cap lock problems, non-related subjects, 40 replies between 2 people, offensive material, personal letters to Bill Gates?, and the list continues.
Do people reply just because they can? Do they feel obligated to reply to everything they see? Do they truly believe they are making sense? I have to wonder if some of these visitors stumbled across the site, had nothing to say but seen the text boxes and filled them out anyway. Or they are using blogs to vent and rant while hidden behind a computer screen.
I don't know if I should be annoyed, frustrated, angry or just laugh it off. To me you could almost consider it spam. It's in the way taking up space, you didn't learn anything from it and you wasted time reading it. Especially when it's your site and spend a great deal of time just editing and keeping extreme comments hidden from your respected readers. I have a list of sites that get a guaranteed 50 replies on every post and only 2-3 are worth reading.
On one side you have the group that takes it seriously and looks forward to a good thread of information while on the other side you have the group that just wants to write and be heard. (in my own experience, the second group seems to be more of the younger crowd / new to online discussions) Those that want a positive experience and those that belong in a chat room.
Personally when I'm about to reply I find myself spending more time thinking if my comments are something others want to read over the time to actually type it. More times then not I start/consider a reply but decide it adds nothing but 1 more to the reply count.
I suppose this is the price you pay for having a public blog with an open reply system. (or a forum where anybody can sign up)