Does having a "recent comments" widget encourage comments?

[sheepishwolf]

Do you believe, or in your experience, does having a "recent comments" widget on the side or bottom of your blog encourage users to leave more comments? And worthwhile comments, at that?

I had never really put any thought into whether this could be the case, but when looking at some blogs on the internet, I noticed that blogs that have this widget enabled seem to have more comments and more worthwhile comments. Perhaps this is because we as humans like to have attention, and having our comments shown on the side of the blog (on of the first things people see when they view the site) could subconsciously make them more eager to comment?

 

[heraitel]

I don't think so. I used "recent comments" widget for a while but it just took space of my site. I removed my widget quickly.
I have read that Disqus is encouraging more than built in widget. It has lots of various widgets, these widgets use human nature to get people inspired to comment.

 

[sherwin07]

Having it is a plus for my blogs because people see other people's comments and become curious about the article. By reading that new article they then post a second comment then a third one and so on. I always use it in all my blogs so you can test it out and see what results you get.