Jill has done a lot of interesting new things on her blog lately. The questionnaire was a cute test, the comments and the tag board perhaps even more revolutionary. It has changed her blog-site for me, I think of it and approach it differently when I can write there. Among other things it confuses the issue for me as to where I should comment. Should I write in the comments to each post? Should I write on the tag-board? Or should I keep my comments here? In a way it scews the focus away from what she writes and draws attention to what others have written on her page. It also becomes the site of other people's conversations, such as Anja and Elin, who use that tag board and then leave that board to finish the discussion elsewhere. Perhaps the reason why I react is based on the economy of links:

When I link to B, I give B a link. That link translates to a precise (though undisclosed) value in Google's PageRank and in other indexing systems like Blogdex. The link has a clearer value to B than the content of Bs page has to me or to my readers. I pay B for Bs content with my link.

The tag-board and the commentary is a free link to the site of the person who uses them, if we type in our url's when writing to Jill or leading discussions. In a way it seems appropriate for me to repay that through addressing the topics on the site, in much the same way as I feel it's polite to pay attention to the person who buys me lunch. But perhaps the tag-board and comments have some other value - perhaps the site can become more interesting because of what others contribute, increasing the value of the site rather than stealing the price of a link.