Call me naiveEsq for not expecting this. I’ve recently discovered a big difference between lawyer weblogs that were created primarily as marketing tools and those written for the sheer joy of sharing ideas and information, or presenting a point of view: The marketing and reputation-oriented lawyer weblogs appear to remove Comments, pings and blogroll listings that might make their “product” look less valuable or useful. Of course, a lot of them simply don’t allow unfiltered comments or pings.
This has been on my mind the past couple of weeks, because I’ve seen a Comment or two, a TrackBack, and a listing of mine disappear from a couple of e-blawgs. Frankly, this takes a lot of the fun and sense of community out of weblogging. I guess that’s what happens when a great form of communication is turned into a “hot” marketing tool. Maybe I’m just lucky to have it happen so infrequently, given my somewhat atypical views on lawyering and marketing.
Does anyone have thoughts or experiences to share on this topic? (“Duh, David!” won’t help much, but won’t be deleted.)
P.S. Going from watching your words to Word Watchers: You ought to check out an interesting post from the non-censoring Evan Schaeffer, of notes from the (legal) underground, titled Beware the Cynic Incubators. Evan warns of evil word-abusers and co-opters (especially bemoaning the fate of the terribly overused word “reform”).