Etiquette
"I've read several bloggers who have their own opinion of what constitutes blog etiquette, but is there an accepted definition?"
"I was curious as to whether or not it was preferred to leave comments on a blog entry of interest, or rather to simply quote and refer. Indeed, I've noticed some bloggers disable comments and even go so far as to explicitly request the quote and refer."
Whether I leave a comment or reply from my blog is usually dependent on the context. I prefer posting a reply from my blog rather than comments for a few reasons:
1) Not everyone has a comments feature on their blog.
2) It gets the traffic flowing both ways (especially with pingback). This is really important to make sure that newer bloggers don't get lost in the dust somewhere.
3) It gives readers of your blog another chance to see your personality, likes, dislikes, and responses to different issues.
Still, there are certain circumstances when it is best to post in the comments:
1) Your comments are intended mainly for the owner of the blog.
Example: IMO, Sam's recent comments about the C# vs VB debate being bad for the community were a lot better than another blogger's approach. Sam posted comments directly to people involved rather than increasing the noise on the issue by posting a direct comment in his blog. This approach is a lot more polite than saying "I think these other guys are idiots" to everyone who comes across your blog. Whether or not the people involved are actually idiots, a personal email or comment is always best for this type of situation. The exception to this rule of course is when the person you are talking about is either McNealy or Ellison :-).
2) Corrections to postings (such as, "by the way, the link to my page is wrong"). It is good to put these in comments, because:a. The blogger will get automatically emailed the comment on many systems, which means he/she can update the post ASAP if needed. Pingbacks don't generally result in emails.
b. When users click on the posting from another they will see your corrections if the post has not yet been updated.
c. You don't litter everyone's aggregators corrections that might already have been made by the time they read their subscribed feeds.3) You don't have your own blog :-)
In any case, it would be nice to have some general community guidelines written and posted somewhere... Scott? Sam?