Note: 95% of this was written on a flight from San Juan to Philadelphia, so please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors or anything that just doesn’t make sense. I haven’t had time to really proofread this and I wanted to finish the challenge in a reasonable amount of time.

Day 26: Exploring Other Ways to Comment

Today, I’m supposed to be looking at alternative ways to comment, such as through audio or video. Personally, I’m more of a text person. I express myself better through text than any other medium. But I can understand why others may want to comment in different media. Greg Schwartz recently implemented video commenting on his blog, and some people responded very positively to it. I’m sure some people would rather comment through audio or video. It would create a much more personal connection if you could see and hear someone making their comment. It would probably lead to people being more kind when they comment since they are really putting themself out there and it’s more apparent that the person on the other side of the screen is a human. It also might lead to fewer misunderstandings regarding the tone of people’s comments.

On the other hand, some people probably wouldn’t feel as comfortable commenting like that (me included). It could take more time and effort to comment. I know I often comment in my PJs, or while talking to my husband, or while watching TV, or all three at once. To do video, I’d really have to stop everything and focus on that, which just doesn’t fit into my current workflow.

I can definitely see video and audio commenting as being an interesting possibility for making deeper connections through commenting, but not for me. I prefer text or face-to-face conversation, not recorded audio and video.

Day 27: What Do You Communicate About Your Personal Brand Through Commenting?

I hate the term branding when it comes to people, but I recognize that we all are essentially building a brand with every action we take online. Each little thing we write online, or that’s written about us, creates a perception of who we are (which may or may not be accurate). I know the way I comment is just as important as what I write on my own blog. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, I take comments I make elsewhere more seriously than what I write on my own blog, because it’s like being in someone else’s house. I always sign my blog comments, but usually it’s with “Meredith” rather than “Meredith Farkas.” However, I always provide a link to my blog, so it’s easier to find out which Meredith it is.

When I look at the comments I’ve made so far in May (around 60 — wow, that’s a lot more than usual!), I think they’re very consistent with the way I write my blog. There’s a lot of me in them and I try to be supportive/constructive in my comments, though I occasionally challenge someone’s view of things. I feel pretty good about the brand I’m putting out there.

I’ve noticed that some people exhibit very different behavior on their blog vs. in comments on other people’s blogs. Some will be very civil on their own blog and then will be quite argumentative or insulting in comments elsewhere. It’s almost like they think their hands are clean so long as they keep their own blog clean. I only know a few people who do this, but I find it almost worse than just being true to who you are everywhere online. It feels very dishonest to me.

And that’s probably why I don’t like the whole idea of branding on individual blogs, because I think it encourages people to focus on creating a brand on their blog rather than on being real. But I completely understand that whether we like it or not, we are creating a brand.

Day 28: What’s Your Blog Commenting Strategy?

On this day, we were supposed to read this post and discuss our own commenting strategy. My strategy is definitely different now than it was when I first started blogging, especially since I don’t really have much of a “strategy” now. Even early on, I never had such a calculated strategy as Caroline Middlebrook, more because I was pretty clueless when I started blogging than anything else. I literally started reading library blogs when I started writing my own. When I first started blogging, commenting on other people’s blogs was a great way to build a network and get my name out there. Unless you’re Roy Tennant or Stephen Abram, when you start a blog, you’re an unknown quantity and you have to build your readership. A big part of that is through good posts, but people may still not stumble upon your blog and find those good posts. Linking to prominent bloggers helps because they then see your blog in their ego feed and will probably take a look. Commenting also is a great way to get more exposure, and not just from the person whose blog you’re commenting on, but also from those who follow that person’s blog. If you write interesting comments, people will likely click through to your blog.

Now, my strategy, if you can call it that, is to comment on posts that interest me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a post from a prominent blogger or someone just starting out; if they write something that I feel compelled to comment on, I will. For me now, it’s more about making connections with interesting people than getting new readers (though hopefully that is happening too).

Day 29: Write a Commenting Guide for Students

This is actually a useful exercise for me since the students in my class at SJSU do have to comment on each other’s blogs and it’s something I didn’t provide much guidance on the first time I ran the class (though their comments were quite insightful in spite of me).

I’d say that my guide would mirror what I wrote about what makes a good comment:

When you are commenting on someone else’s post, consider the following elements that make for a good blog comment:

• It’s relevant to the original post
• It is thoughtful and insightful
• Your unique voice comes through in the comment
• It is civil in tone — no jabs at other people
• It is short enough to be readable, but long enough to be meaningful

There are many, many, many flavors of good comments and most good comments will not meet all of this criteria. Some may be encouraging while others may challenge everything you wrote in your post. Some may be personally revealing while others may be very academic. Some may be a sentence long, others may be a blog post in themselves. Some may be insightful, some may be supportive, and others may just be funny. The most important thing to keep in mind when you’re writing a comment on someone else’s post is to be true to yourself.

Day 30: How Can You Use What You’ve Learned about Commenting to Change Your Teaching Practices?

I don’t know that this challenge has changed my teaching practices, per se, but it has impacted what I will teach about blogs in the Fall. I never thought much about commenting before I started this and likewise, I didn’t think it required much comment in my class on social software. Now I see it differently. I plan to discuss more the importance of commenting and how critical it is to building connection and community online. I’ll discuss some of the things from this challenge, like what makes a good comment and the different ways to comment. I hope I can communicate to my students how valuable commenting is to community-building and give them the confidence to comment on blogs outside of the class (I may even make that an assignment!).

Day 31: What Were Your Top 5 Lessons from the Comment Challenge?

I initially started this challenge because I’d been feeling a little disconnected from my online peeps. It had been a difficult winter for me and I’d disengaged a little from the online world. So I really wanted to sort of re-commit myself to my community through commenting. It ended up being a really illuminating experience through which I learned a lot about the value of commenting and my own feelings and actions in that realm.

Here are just a few of the things I learned:

1. Commenting is a critical component of community-building in the blogosphere. While we can connect through our individual blog posts with trackbacks and whatnot, comments keep the conversation going and allow everyone to contribute, regardless of whether they have a blog. It’s a beautiful thing.

2. I feel more connected to others when I comment. I commented more this month than I have in the past and it really made a difference. I felt more connected to the people whose posts I was commenting on and more connected to the profession in general. I found it very personally rewarding and I hope to keep it up.

3. I take commenting very seriously and that’s ok. It takes me a long time to comment usually, because I think very carefully about what I’m going to write. A blog is like someone’s home and I’m not going to put my feet up on someone else’s coffee table like I would on my own. That being said, I definitely do feel more comfortable posting on friends’ blogs, mainly because I know they will be less likely to misinterpret anything I write.

4. Never comment when you’re angry or frustrated. It’s not like I didn’t know this before, but this challenge really convinced me that writing angry comments is a horrible idea. Chances are you will regret what you wrote, but also, if we are creating a brand with everything we put online, I don’t want to be a person who writes angry comments. I’m an impulsive person, but I’m not a mean person and I’d hate for anyone to ever think I am.

5. I need to be better about responding to comments. I’m not going to respond to every comment every time, because I don’t always have something to say to your comment (which doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your comment, I do). However, I am going to try to engage more with my commenters whenever possible. Sometimes I get too busy and I hope people understand that and don’t assume that I have a lack of interest in getting comments. I love getting comments; it makes me feel like what I wrote mattered to someone else. It means everything.

This has been a wonderful experience and I’m very glad I took part in it. I didn’t find every activity useful or enlightening, but on the whole, it was a good learning experience.

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Day 19: Respond to a Commenter on Your Own Blog

This activity is supposed to be about responding to people who comment on your posts. The person who created the activity writes “if readers have made time to comment on your posts, you should always make sure to respond back (ideally to each reader) in the comments on that post. This is very important for building your blog’s community as it demonstrates that you value your readers and their input.” I’ve responded to a several comments on my blog this week, so technically, I completed this activity.

However, this is a place where I’d definitely like to improve. While I do respond to comments on the blog, I probably don’t respond to as much as I should. I usually respond to individual comments that I feel compelled to comment on or I summarize or respond to a group of comments. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed by the number of comments. I agree that offering some response is important to creating a strong blog community, but sometimes responding to every comment is unnecessary and excessive. I don’t think that not responding to every individual comment discourages people from posting (but please correct me if I’m wrong — I’m just speaking from my own experience) and writing comments like “thanks for commenting” and the like don’t really add to the conversation. I’m very much from the Walt Crawford school of “first have something to say.” Blog posts and comments are never going to be an exact back-and-forth conversation and I don’t think we need to recreate exactly the sorts of conversations we have in the physical world where there usually is some response to what you say.

But, yes, I’d like to do better with this.

Day 20: Three Links Out

This was a challenging activity:

This task is based an idea by Dave Ferguson that he calls “Three Links Out” or “Three Clicks Out.” It’s a way to find and explore blogs that aren’t as familiar to you.

1. Go to one of the blogs you regularly read and follow a link to another blog. This link could be in the blogroll or in a post.
2. From that blog, follow a second link to a new blog.
3. From that location, follow a third link to somewhere new.

Once you follow your third link, find a post and comment on it. If you aren’t happy with where you ended up, repeat the process until you find something that inspires a comment.

Oh boy, this was one I had to repeat and repeat and repeat until I found a blog with a post that I felt comfortable commenting on. Half of the links went to non-blogs or to blog posts that were extremely old. Finally, I found a good path:

I started at the blog post from ACRLog about the creepy treehouse concept, since I was curious about where the concept originally came from. I next ended up at a blog called Flexknowlogy, which also talked about the creepy treehouse. I clicked on a link and ended up at Technagogy and another creepy treehouse post. From there, I clicked on an edublog from their blogroll called Injenuity and found an interesting post about how the author doesn’t read books much anymore because when she reads something now, she wants to engage with that person and take part in the conversation. I found the post really interesting, so it wasn’t difficult for me to leave a comment.

Through this activity, I found some interesting educational tech blogs that I ended up putting into my “trial feeds” folder (where all new feeds go for the first month I follow them) in Google Reader.

Day 21: Make a Recommendation

On this day, I’m supposed to “make a recommendation for a resource in a blog comment. This can be a link to another blog or post or a link to a book, video, etc. Be sure to indicate why you’re making the recommendation.”

This is certainly something I’ve done before. I’ve recommended books, blog posts, websites, etc. in comments on other people’s blogs when I’ve had something useful to add. However, I’m not going to do it right now, because I don’t see any posts where I could comment with a useful recommendation. I take commenting pretty seriously, so I’m not going to write a useless comment on someone else’s blog.

Day 22: Highlight a Favorite Comment

I’m not going to highlight a favorite comment as much as I’m going to highlight a few brief comments from my last post about self-disclosure and connections in the online world that seemed really interesting to me:

Paige Fujisue brought up an interesting parallel between blogging and small town life:

On a more philosophical note, I find it interesting how our self-disclosure and blending between professional and personal lives actually draws society closer to the sense of a small-town. While I’ve never personally lived in a small town, my impression is that in a small town everyone knows everyone else’s business for better and for worse. And while it can be risky to be so open about ourselves in an online environement, readers certainly can benefit from the honesty shared by bloggers. Thank you Meredith and others who share their lives with us.

I enjoyed this comment from Jennifer about the birth of her newfound desire to blog and connect to people online:

This was a timely post. A few months ago, blogging wasn’t something I ever saw myself doing. I was perfectly content to keep my own journal and let that be the end of it. Recently, I’ve wanted to find a way to let people in my life (who I no longer see due to distance) know what’s going on with me and a blog is a simple way to let those old friends in to your present life. And as you make that attempt to connect, more you who you are shows up in your writing. It’s a progressive revealing of yourself to friends old and new and a wonderful way to connect with others. I guess if we’re asking ourselves the question “am I disclosing too much”, there is some internal censor at work which can keep us within limitations which are both comfortable and able to reach out to others.

Finally, here is an excerpt from E. McGrew’s comment that should be encouraging to all of us who blog:

As far as the sense of community, I would like to say that all of the bloggers out in Libraryland help me to love my job even more. When all you see are your local coworkers and hear the same complaints and problems all the time, it is easy to get discouraged and unhappy in your job. But when I read everyone’s blogs and see that everyone else is going through the same things, and that people out there really have a passion for libraries (the way I do), it really makes me happy to be a librarian. I can take the things I’ve read and share them with my coworkers, and it makes all of us want to do better in our place of work.

Day 23: What Makes a Great Comment?

Gosh, I’d say that that the criteria for a great comment are pretty similar to the criteria for a great blog post:

• It’s relevant to the original post
• It is thoughtful and insightful
• Your unique voice comes through in the comment
• It is civil in tone — no jabs at other people (some snark is fine as long as it’s not directed in such a way that it would hurt someone)
• It is short enough to be readable, but long enough to be meaningful

And just like the criteria for a blog post, these criteria are equally irrelevant. There are many, many, many flavors of good comments and most good comments will not meet all of this criteria. Some may be encouraging while others may challenge everything you wrote in your post. Some may be personally revealing while others may be very academic. Some may be a sentence long, others may be a blog post in themselves. Some may be insightful, some may be supportive, and others may just be funny. I do feel pretty strongly that comments that attack someone are bad comments, even if what they wrote is technically correct. Tone makes such a difference in whether people will see your comment as useful or just plain mean. Also, what I consider a good blog comment may totally differ from what you consider a good blog comment. Each person will respond differently to someone’s writing.

Day 24: Comment on a Blog Written in a Foreign Language

I must admit that I didn’t follow this one exactly as written. I was supposed to have read a blog post in a foreign language and commented in that same foreign language. We were encouraged to compose our comment in English and use an online translation program to translate it into that language. I complied with half of that. Since I have enough knowledge of the Danish language to read a bit, I keep up with a few Danish blogs in the hopes that I will hear something interesting about how social software is being implemented in Scandinavia. Sometimes I can understand most of what I read, sometimes I’m lost.

Just recently, I saw a post about an awesome local knowledge wiki created in Helsingør (aka Elsinor, where Hamlet’s castle is) created as a partnership between the local public library and the local history museum. I was really excited to find local knowledge wikis springing up in Denmark (here’s another) and to see how they customized MediaWiki. I decided to comment on that post, because I’m really curious about the general attitudes of Danish librarians towards wikis in libraries and what other Danish libraries might be using wikis.

However, I did not comment på dansk. First of all, I know that most Danes are quite fluent in English and that this particular blogger has commented on blog posts and articles in English in the past. If I’d tried to write in Danish, it would have come out really muddled, and it would have been even worse had I used one of those translation programs (do they even have one that does English to Danish?). Since I feel like the comment itself is more important than the exercise, I commented in English. I’d be embarrassed to write a virtually unreadable comment on someone else’s blog.

Day 25: Take a Break!

Can do! I’ll probably be particularly bad next week about keeping up with this challenge since I’m going to Puerto Rico for an all-day workshop for academic librarians on the island followed by (hopefully) a trip to El Yunque, the rainforest near San Juan. I’ve never been to Puerto Rico before so I’m pretty excited!

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Day 15: Give a Comment Award

I’m supposed to recognize one or a few commenters on my blog today, and for whatever parameters I choose (they write good comments, they comment frequently, they make me think, etc.).

I’m going to recognize a few commenters who really challenge me and make me think. Many of the comments I get challenge me, but these are the people who have done it regularly over the years:

Dorothea Salo Ryan Deschamps Steven Bell Mark Lindner

So thanks for disagreeing with me and either making me think of things in a different way or challenging me to better defend my ideas. Supportive comments are always appreciated, but I think sometimes people don’t realize that disagreeing is encouraged on most blogs and adds a lot to the conversation. So disagree away!

Day 16: Go Back and Catch Up on Something

I think that’s what I’m doing today!

Day 17: Five in Five

This activity actually came from our profession’s very own Tony Tallent from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. The goal is to write five comments in five minutes without resorting to superficial “I agree” or “that’s good” comments.

What I learned from this is that it’s impossible for me. I not only spend a good bit of time reading thoughtful posts, but I really do think about what I’m going to say in my comment. I want to contribute something useful, and I’m unwilling to do that for the sake of time. In fact, I’d say I spend more time per word on my comments than on my blog, because it’s like being in someone else’s house — it makes you a little more careful. God forbid I break something!

I think it took me about 15 minutes to do this. First, I went through my aggregator and found posts I wanted to comment on, and I purposely picked two that had very few words and one I’d already read. Next, I composed a comment for each. Some required more thought and care than others. But I did manage to comment on five posts.

While I guess I was a dismal failure at this, it did make me think about how I feel about commenting at other people’s blogs.

Day 18: Analyze the Comments on Your Own Blog

Today I’m doing a self-audit on my blog posts and the comments they do or don’t attract:

Which of your posts have generated the most comments?

In 2008, these are the posts that have gotten between 14 and 48 comments:

• Is this how we encourage people to contribute?
• The Monkey Song (with a hat tip to Louis Prima)
• Chutes and Ladders
• They’re moving! They’re shaking!
• Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
• The CloudBook has landed!
• The essence of Library 2.0?
• Women, career and getting a fair shake

Eight high-comment posts in 4 1/2 months? Not bad!

Which has generated the best conversation? (The last question is about quantity; this one is about quality.)

I’d say these are the ones that have led to the most interesting conversations over the past 4 1/2 months:

• Is this how we encourage people to contribute?
• The Monkey Song (with a hat tip to Louis Prima)
• On not so SWIFT otters and instilling a fear of failure
• Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
• The essence of Library 2.0?
• Women, career and getting a fair shake

Are there any patterns to the commenting on your own blog? Do certain types of posts generate more comments than others?

Patterns? Absolutely! The posts that generate the best comments are usually the ones I’m most nervous to write because I have no idea how people will respond. When I’ve written about gender issues, the ALA, staff issues, library school, and career stuff I usually get a lot of comments. These are the sort of topics about which people have strong feelings and opinions. I also have gotten a lot of comments on posts where I’ve announced good news, but those are just congratulatory-type posts.

If you do see a pattern or commonality between posts that generate good comments, what can you do to increase those qualities in other posts?

I don’t think I really want to make changes to the way I blog. Not every post on this blog needs to generate that sort of intense conversation. I like taking part in conversations on many blogs and I don’t know if I’d have the time if I was so focused on generating and taking part in continuous conversations on my blog. Similarly, I read lots of interesting blog posts from others that I don’t feel compelled at all to comment on. It doesn’t make them bad posts; it’s just that they’re less conversational. I’m pretty happy with the number of posts that get lots of comments; seems just right to me.

The fact is, I still don’t see conversation as being the only thing that blogs are about (nor do I see comments as the primary measure of success). If your blog isn’t getting the number of comments mine is, it doesn’t make it an unsuccessful blog. There are plenty of blogs I read and enjoy greatly that I never comment on. There are as many types of blogs as there are bloggers, and I’m glad for it.

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Day 12: Make Sure Your Blog Technology is “Comment Friendly”

Last week, I examined the comment-friendliness of my posts. Today, I’m supposed to examine the comment-friendliness of the technologies I employ on my blog. Some blogs certainly do put up a lot of hurdles to people wanting to comment. For some reason, on Blogger blogs, I always fail to enter the captcha right the first time. Some blogs even require you to create an account to comment like on Lifehacker.

On my blog, all someone has to do is enter a name and email address. There really isn’t anything else required of commenters. Everything should automatically show up on the blog unless the person entered a certain number of links at which point it gets held for moderation (and I get an email about it so I usually get to it relatively quickly). Every once in a while, Akismet grabs a comment that isn’t spam and throws it into my spam bin, so I check that at least twice a week. I try to use spam prevention technologies that don’t put any burden on the person posting, because I know I’m less likely to post a comment if I have to jump through hoops.

Day 13: Write a Blog Post Using Comments
I actually unintentionally did this activity before I even read about it:

For today’s task, we’re going to write a blog post that responds to comments. This can be a post that summarizes or reflects on comments we’ve received on our own blogs.

The post I wrote on Thursday evening was a reflection on the comments I’d received on my previous post about speaking, compensation and the like. I know that not everyone follows comments on other people’s blogs, and the comments on that original post were so rich and thought-provoking. I wanted to make sure people were aware of the dialogue and also to reflect on my own views regarding the various opinions expressed in the comments.

A lot of the comment stuff in this challenge has focused on our own blogs. This is a place I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job of encouraging conversation. But if anyone has suggestions on how I could make this a better environment for conversation, please do let me know. I love that my blog gets comments and I learn so much from other people’s views, so if there’s something I can do to make it more likely that you’ll comment, I’d love to know about it.

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Rather than boring you to death with 31 Comment Challenge posts, I’m trying to condense a bunch of the activities into each post so if you’re bored, you can easily skip these.

Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche

My husband is definitely a car guy. He watches car shows, reads car magazines, and follows several car blogs (I’m actually a big 50′s classic car fan, but he’s more of an 80s Porsche, Lamborghini car person). He constantly talks to me about one particular car blog called Jalopnik which has a feature called Project Car Hell where you can vote on which horrible old car you’d rather have (and disastrous old French, Italian and British cars are often among the options). I try to humor Adam when he talks about this stuff since I probably bore him to death with talk about OPACs and library blogs and weeding and the like.

So, for this activity, I decided to visit Jalopnik myself. I saw a post about Nick Bollea (son of Hulk Hogan) who has been sentenced to 8 months in prison for driving a 700 hp car at over 100 mph on a residential street and crashing it, leaving his passenger in a vegetative state. I’d watched the Hogan’s reality show on VH1 and was completely disgusted by the way they spoiled their kids, didn’t teach them any responsibility, and even encouraged their son to race cars before he knew how to drive responsibly on the road. So, since I had strong opinions on this, I decided to comment. First, I had to create an account. Then, when I decided to post the comment, it didn’t show up. I looked at my account and it says that it hasn’t been approved yet and it won’t show up until then. But what I said basically was that I hope young people who’ve grown up watching people like him and the people from The Hills learn that money cannot insulate you from everything and that no responsible parent should give a teenager a 700 hp car since even I drove like an idiot at 16/17.

The comments there: definitely a lot more testosterone than I see on most of the blogs I read. A lot of the comments on this post talked about what they hoped would happen to Nick in prison in language I will not repeat on this blog. On other posts, it’s obvious that most of the people here really know their stuff about cars and that these people have been faithful readers for a long time. It’s definitely got a strong community spirit there, but the sort of environment where people will slam you for saying something stupid and where most newbies would not feel comfortable commenting. Most posts get lots of comments, more than 20, sometimes more than 50, and the comments are almost always short and frequently snarky. It’s not an environment I would feel comfortable posting a comment unless I was an expert on what they were writing about.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

This is a really interesting question:

Now that we’ve spent several days trying to build up conversations through blog comments, I’m going to challenge you a little with a question–should we be using the commenting capacity to generate conversations between bloggers, or should we be interacting through our blog posts?

Check out this article and the many references to bloggers who think that comments should be disabled on blogs. Read through those posts and consider whether or not you think it’s better to build community through comments or through conversations occurring across blogs–or maybe a combination of both. What, to your mind, is the purpose of comments on blogs and are we better served by encouraging people to respond to ideas on our blogs or over on their own blogs?

I’ve noticed three groups of people who think we shouldn’t have comments on blogs (and there may be other reasons not to have comments, but this is what I’ve noticed):

1. People who don’t get comments and thus think that comments must be “so five minutes ago”
2. People who want to write their opinions on things, but not have them challenged
3. People who are afraid of what commenters might write

I think it’s ok for someone to turn off comments if their blog is more informational and doesn’t encourage conversation. It’s also ok if the person is afraid of comments or just wants that one-to-many communication vehicle without being questioned. It’s their choice and I respect their choice. The one blog that I get really frustrated with for not having comments open is Caveat Lector. Dorothea often writes really opinionated posts that inspire me to comment, but the comments are turned off. If I’m motivated enough by what she wrote, I write a blog post in response. Otherwise, I might email or IM her about it. Most times, though, I just wish she had comments open and do nothing, because I just want to write a short comment. And I’d bet that a lot of other people feel that way, and that some terrific conversations could be happening on her blog if she just opened up comments. When she wrote a post about not being as big a rock star as me (um, whatever), I privately suggested to her that it might have more to do with her not allowing open and easy conversations on her blog through comments than with how she looks. I think that early on, I gained a loyal readership on my blog because they could become part of the conversation instead of just reading me and forgetting about it. Commenting, reflecting, disagreeing, conversating… all of that makes one’s blog stickier. I respect her choice to not have comments on her blog, but I do believe it has had an impact on her readership.

As to limiting comments only to blogs, I think that’s a terrible idea. It limits conversation only to those who have blogs. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with people on my blog didn’t have blogs at all. Some people started by commenting on people’s blog and then started their own later on (Ryan Deschamps is a great example — he used to bust my chops regular before he had his own blog). I don’t want to write an entire blog post every time I have an opinion about what someone wrote. Sometimes, all it takes is a few sentences or two paragraphs-worth of writing. When my thoughts get too big for a comment, it’s nice to know that I can comment on my blog. But I really see those spaces as both being distinct and critical for conversation. And unlike David Winer and others, I feel like blogs are about conversation.

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

This is so not a place where I have problems. I tend to be shocked by the number of comments I get on a lot of my posts. But anyways, I’m supposed to look at this post, Six Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog, and see how my blog measures up:

1. You sound like a press release.

I don’t know that every blog is designed to create conversation and that’s ok. There are some blogs I read that I learn a lot from. Steven Cohen’s and Sarah Houghton-Jan’s blogs are perfect examples and are two of my favorites. I learn a lot, but I rarely feel compelled to post a comment because their posts are usually about pushing useful information out to us.

While some of my posts are informational, a lot of them are more about my ideas and feelings, and so are more the type people might want to comment on. Doesn’t make the informational blogs less useful; they just serve a different purpose.

2. You sound like an infomercial.

I rarely promote things on this blog, so I’m not too worried about that one.

3. You sound like a know-it-all.

I don’t know if I sound like a know-it-all. I think usually write what I think and make it pretty clear that my view isn’t the be-all-end-all on things. I often ask people to share what they think about things, which hopefully also helps to make me sound less know-it-all-ish. But I’m sure I have my moments, especially when I feel really strongly about something. It’s definitely something I try to avoid though.

4. You haven’t showed them how.

You all know what comments are, right? You know you can comment on any post I’ve written right at the bottom of the post. Given that the majority of my readers consume my content via an RSS reader, I’m going to guess that you’re a pretty blog-savvy bunch.

5. You haven’t created the right atmosphere.

I get a lot of comments on this blog, so it makes me think I must have created the right atmosphere where people can feel comfortable posting comments. We’re no Jalopnik here. No one will tear your head off for what you write. And it’s definitely not cliquey here; I see a lot of first-time commenters here all the time, and everyone has just as valid a voice as everyone else. But if you can think of anything I can do to make the atmosphere of my blog more conducive to conversation, I’d appreciate the suggestions.

6. You just don’t seem that into it.

If there’s one thing you can say about me, it’s that I’m very into it. There are periods of time when I don’t write much because I don’t feel like I have a lot to say. I tend to write when I feel inspired, and I hope it comes out in my writing. I have a real passion for this; otherwise, I’d be working on the article I’m supposed to be writing for Library Journal instead of working on this post!

Day 11: Write a Blog Comment Policy

This is something I’ve already done in response to some issues I’ve had on this blog with commenters in the past advertising their products, writing offensive things, and posting under another person’s name. It’s short, sweet and to the point:

The author reserves the right to delete any comments she deems offensive, irrelevant, or blatant advertisements. Any fraudulent comments will be deleted and every effort will be made to publicly expose the perpetrator(s).

I really take pains to avoid deleting comments, but sometimes it’s necessary. I feel like I want to make this as open a forum as I can, but, in the end, this is “my house” and I have to make rules about the types of behavior I will and won’t tolerate. Offensive or fraudulent comments only serve to discourage conversation, so my policy is all about encouraging conversation and discouraging creeps.

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In case you were wondering, I haven’t given up on the comment challenge! I’ve just been rather involved in the comment storm that’s taking place on my blog right now.

I definitely didn’t do all of these activities “by the book” but my goal with this is really to be a better blog citizen and think more about my commenting than to win something. So, as far as I’m concerned, I’m right on target.

Day 2: Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented on Before

I did this on Marianne Lenox’s blog, as her passion quilt post really touched a chord for me. I’m a big believer that we have a lot of control over how we feel and how things affect us, so I thought that would be a good post to comment on. Marianne is also taking part in this challenge and I’ve been wanting to get to know her better since she’s a Twitter friend (not that I’ve been on Twitter much lately).

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

I signed up for coComment as this is where we were supposed to sign up when we’re taking part in the challenge. Since it’s the first comment tracking service I’ve ever used, I have nothing to compare it with, but I’m pretty happy with it. It makes it easy to keep track of where you’re commenting thanks to a nice Firefox extension that I installed on both my work and home computers. And it’s nice to be able to see in a single space where you commented and what comments have been posted to the blogs subsequently.

Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

My friend Iris wrote an interesting post inspired by the comment challenge about how she rarely bothers to check if other people’s posts have generated a conversation in the comments. In my comment, I mentioned that some people subscribe to comment feeds (though I don’t) and then asked people who do to describe their experiences with them. I got some useful answers from several other bloggers, which made me realize that I didn’t have my own comment feed on my blog’s sidebar. It’s there now. I also think I’m going to subscribe to the comment feeds of a few of my favorite blogs. I’m sure I’m missing a lot by not doing that.

Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With

Oh boy. This is an area I could use some improvement in. One blog that I have recently unsubscribed from, but read for about a year was the Brazen Careerist. She writes a lot of posts that get people up in arms, including me, which is why I decided finally to unsubscribe. My last act was a comment on her post last week. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I wrote what I did, but I found this post so horrendous that I couldn’t be polite about it. I really shouldn’t have written it, but it was the culmination of reading a lot of posts on her blog that I found offensive and/or misleading. I feel like someone who offers advice — who people listen and look up to — should be more responsible. But still, I regret the tone of what I wrote. And I will be more careful about this in the future.

The other place I’ve disagreed with people is on my own blog. I’ve been taking part in a debate about speakers and how they are treated at conferences, and I have disagreed with a number of the people who have commented. However, the entire tone of the discussion is different. We all are coming from a place of mutual respect, and it has led to an interesting and illuminating discussion rather than an angry and defensive discussion. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the better discussions I’ve taken part in through blog comments.

Day 6: Engage another Commenter in Discussion

I commented on a commenter at Stephen Francoeur’s Digital Reference blog who made the assertion that students now knowing that reference services exist isn’t a reason why people don’t utilize reference services. My comment is still awaiting moderation. I argued that students may not understand what reference means and what the librarians can do for them. I certainly didn’t when I was in school.

Oh, and I also poked fun at Steve Lawson on Iris’ blog, which I suppose could be seen as an attempt to start a discussion with him.

Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned so Far

I’m happy that I’ve done the commenting I’ve done this week. I read a lot of posts every week; too many to really focus on most of them. Feeling like I needed to comment has actually made me read some posts more closely than I would have otherwise. I haven’t found many posts this week that I felt strongly about (either positively or negatively), so I did feel a little challenged to find ways to fulfill the requirements. It’s funny, because other weeks I see tons of posts that I’d love to comment on but I feel too busy to make the time. Oh the irony!

I guess the most important realization I’ve made (which probably seems obvious) is that a blog debate where everyone is coming from a place of mutual respect is far more satisfying than a blog debate where people are coming from a place of anger. When I write an angry or snarky comment, I feel like an ass afterwards. When I take part in a conversation like the one happening on my blog right now, I feel positive and energized. I’ve vowed to unsubscribe to any blog that makes me angry. Life’s too short to waste on negative feelings for people you don’t even know.

I’m really enjoying this challenge so far! Can’t wait to see what comes next!

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The first activity in the comment challenge is to do a comment self-audit. Here’s mine:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

  It is so variable. Probably on average I comment on three blogs a week. Sometimes I don’t comment at all, sometimes I comment a lot. Sometimes my comments are a sentence or two long, sometimes they’re more like a manifesto. It all depends on how busy I am and how compelled I feel to comment on the posts I’ve been reading that week. Three isn’t much. I feel like I should be contributing more.

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

  I don’t, and this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I rarely see what happens in the comments after I’ve commented unless my comment was particularly impassioned and I’m eager to see the response. So I’m happy that subscribing to coComment is part of this project. I’d like to keep up with these conversations better, because it’s so easy to forget where you commented when you’re keeping up with hundreds of blogs.

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
  I don’t think I comment at the same blogs, but since I don’t keep a close watch on my comments, I may just not be noticing a pattern. I usually comment when something catches my attention in a positive or negative way. When Ryan wrote about how he’s been using social software to grow his local network, I commented because I thought it was awesome. When I read a post on Penelope Trunk’s blog that really bothers me (which is frequent… that’s why I’ve decided to unsubscribe… I don’t need to read blogs that raise my blood pressure), I comment and express my disagreement. If someone is asking a question that I feel like I have an answer to or an opinion on, I’ll comment. Sometimes I’ll just comment to say “congratulations!” or “great post!” I haven’t seen any pattern to where I comment and I frequently do so in places where I’ve never commented before.

Next I’m supposed to look at how my commenting measures up to what is suggested in the Lifehacker guide. Here are their suggestions and my thoughts on how I’ve done:

Contribute new information to the discussion.
Don’t comment for the sake of commenting.
Know when to comment and when to e-mail.
Remember that nobody likes a know-it-all.
Don’t post when you’re angry, upset, drunk or emotional.
Do not feed or tease the trolls.
Make the tone of your message clear.
Own your comment.
Be succinct.
Cite your sources with links or inline quoting.
Be courteous.

I feel very strongly about only writing comments that contribute something to the conversation. I usually avoid commenting if someone has already said what I wanted to say (which inevitably leads to less commenting), but I don’t like to write something on someone else’s blog if it’s not going to add to the discussion in some way. The only exception to that is when I’m adding my congratulations in response to someone’s good news. In that case, I think redundancy is a very good thing.

I’ve learned my lesson about when to write a comment and when to either hold back or email the person. With emails, I usually wait 24 hours before sending something if I feel there is any chance I might regret that. With blog comments, an entire conversation can take place in the space of a few hours, so waiting 24 can make your comment as good as useless. So it adds to that sense of urgency. Still, it’s better to wait than to react. I have made some big mistakes in this area in the past, and it’s probably led to my reticence in commenting in the first place. I’ve learned from people like Walt Crawford and Karen Schneider that when in doubt, it’s much better to send someone an email than to comment publicly if it might hurt them or might be too personal for the blogosphere. Being “right” publicly may be great, but it doesn’t feel good to know that you made someone else feel like crap. I don’t comment anymore when I feel bad or angry. And I’ve learned not to comment on sites like the Annoyed Librarian because it’s futile and just feeds the bad behavior of her “usuals”. Letting go has been a hard lesson for me to learn, but I feel a lot better when I do .

As far as being succinct, well… if you read this blog, then you know that’s pretty much impossible. But I’ll try to do better next time.