John Gruber’s Daring Fireball Gets Comments (Whether He Likes It or Not)

By Leander Kahney (8:16 pm, Feb 02 2010)

John Gruber of Daring Fireball. CC-licensed photo by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid via Flickr

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the most influential Apple pundit on the web, but readers often complain about the lack of comments on his website.

In fact, Gruber’s site is famous for not having comments. In an age when every website falls over itself to accommodate reader interactivity, Gruber stands alone. He has stubbornly resisted adding comments to his site for years.

Gruber has explained that he dislikes comments because they distract from his all-important voice. This is exactly the kind of egotistical statement that makes him unpopular with many people, especially other writers, but a must-read pundit.

But Gruber is about to get comments, whether he likes it or not.

The team behind MacHeist has just launched DaringFireballWithComments.net– a website that mirrors Gruber’s site with, you guessed it, comments.

“It’s good timing since he was gloating over his lack of comments today,” said John Casasanta, the brains behind the project, “and we’re gonna allow anonymous comments. It should be a shitstorm.”

The lack of comments on Daring Fireball is the thing readers most often ask about, Gruber has noted.

“It’s totally egotistical,” he explained in a podcast, transcribed here. “I want Daring Fireball to be a site that you can’t skim if you’re in the target audience for it. You say, “Oh, a new article from John. I need to read it,” and your deadlines go whizzing by because you have to read what I wrote.”

Casasanta said he has dreamed about the adding comments to DF for years, and pulled it together “on impulse” on Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a social experiment to see what the site would be like if people were allowed to voice their opinions,” he explained. “I think he’ll embrace it publicly but deep down, he’ll be pissed, which makes me happy.”

There’s no love lost between the two Casasanta and Gruber.

Gruber attacked Cassantra’s wildly successful MacHeist when it first launched, only to praise it later when MacHeist started running paid-advertising on his site. (All Gruber’s posts on MacHeist — good and bad – are here).

“I never called someone a douchebag so many times in my life,” said Casasanta.

Lots of people have called Gruber a douchebag, and a lot worse. Gruber may be influential, but he’s widely reviled for the very personal nature of his attacks — and the inability of critics to answer his charges, often because of the lack of a comments system.

Casasanta noted that DaringFireballWithComments.com pulls in Gruber’s writing by RSS and serves the site’s ads, so Gruber shouldn’t lose any income — and may gain some.

Gruber didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

John Gruber's Daring Fireball is about to get comments, thanks to DaringFireballWithComments.net.

61 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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martini
There’s some real deep commentary going on over there… Christ. No wonder he doesn’t allow comments.
Really… If you don’t like what he writes… don’t read it. How difficult is that to grasp. And if you don’t like what he writes about you… You’re probably in the wrong business.
Steve
Judging by the quality of comments on http://daringfireballwithcomments.net/ I think you guys have proven that Gruber was right not to include them.
Anyway, it’s not like Gruber doesn’t welcome feedback, he just doesn’t want to host it for you. It takes 5 minutes to set up your own free blog and reply…
Nobbe
I might as well comment again. People who think it’s a good idea to rip off this guys (copyrighted) website: you’ve been voicing your opinions here (which is legal and ok) LEAVE IT AT THAT. There are a lot of great comments here lending credence to his choice to not enable commenting on his blog. Stop being obstinate, write the guy an email and let him do whatever he wants. Cast your gaze about to other forms of media where it is much more difficult to be heard (where there is also no built in commenting mechanism) and you’ll see many people using THEIR OWN forums for commentary or like in the newspaper writing to the editor. I know I’d be expecting a lawsuit if I ever copied someone else’s work.
Beside all that, you should all grow up and use your time and intelligence for something good. It’s a shame you’re even giving this issue the time of day, let alone committing so much effort to mirroring a website for something so low.
Ersatz
Funny. Gruber doesn’t want comments, and that entirely reasonable. It’s also reasonable for people to have opinions on whatever Gruber opines.
To those commenting (!) on the poor state of comments (that existed) on daringfireballwithcomments, do you not see the point of those poor comments?
One of the most amusing things to come out of all this is the Gruber apologists who complain about copyright, when 90% of Gruber’s ‘content’ is mere links to others’ content/articles/statements with a sentence or two either lambasting it or claiming he was there first. It’s tiring, monotonous, and disingenuous.
These days Gruber is just a link filter, and not a good one at that.
Xavier
When one spends more time reading comments than the original article, it speaks of the quality of the so-called journalists writing the article. As despair.com says: Never Before Have So Many People with So Little to Say Said So Much to So Few.
A good source of information should not have comments.
IcyFog
It’s his blog he can do what he wants. I don’t know why people hound him to have comments if he doesn’t want them.
Frankly, it’s egotistical of readers who want comments.
“Waaaayyy! I can’t post comments so others can hear my voice!!!” <- That's egotistical.
Thomas
I grew weary of Gruber a long time ago…so I “commented” with my mouse clicks and went elsewhere. Dan Dilger gives me sterling analysis, and a chance to interact, without the attitude (well, except when he descends into political rants – but I just ignore that).
jerome
Funny that when a guy calls someone a dipshit, when that someone really is one, and fully deserves to be called that, everyone else gets precious about it. My vote for DF.
big tuck
i actually just found out about this guy from wikipedia. he looks so fucking stupid. he was definitely never in a fraternity.
“yeah, i have a neckbeard, am overweight, run a technical evangelism blog, and code, no big fucking deal.”
Jim Hassinger
Leander, if you didn’t want comments on your blog, could you make it happen? No. Management would tell you you have to have it, because their studies tell them, blah, blah, clickthrough, pageviews, etc. Do you personally have to take out the spam, or do you hire someone to do that? Since this is Gruber’s blog, then I certainly sympathize with him. It’s hard enough coming up with lots of different posts every day. He certainly gets lots of “comment” across the web, calling him a jackass and worse.
What’s more important, this whole “open” idolatry has to be carefully examined. In Google’s case, they are worshipped by many (a “cult”?) because they mention being open a lot. They are, in fact, a mega-corporation with shares worth $500 apiece, and they have a lot of secrets they have no intention of sharing with the world. Sharing “open” and “free” software is part of their business model. Saving up tons of information about YOU is how they make money on the back end.
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