{"id":773,"date":"2008-05-03T15:13:01","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T20:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/05\/03\/31-day-comment-challenge-day-1\/"},"modified":"2008-06-08T16:12:31","modified_gmt":"2008-06-08T21:12:31","slug":"31-day-comment-challenge-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/03\/31-day-comment-challenge-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"31 Day Comment Challenge: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/comment_challenge_logo_2.png' title='comment_challenge_logo_2.png'><img src='http:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/comment_challenge_logo_2.png' alt='comment_challenge_logo_2.png' \/><\/a> The first activity in the comment challenge is to do a comment self-audit. Here&#8217;s mine:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?<\/em>\n<p>It is so variable. Probably on average I comment on three blogs a week. Sometimes I don&#8217;t comment at all, sometimes I comment a lot. Sometimes my comments are a sentence or two long, sometimes they&#8217;re more like a manifesto. It all depends on how busy I am and how compelled I feel to comment on the posts I&#8217;ve been reading that week. Three isn&#8217;t much. I feel like I should be contributing more.<\/li>\n<li><em>Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?<\/em>\n<p>I don&#8217;t, and this is something I&#8217;ve been thinking about for a while. I rarely see what happens in the comments after I&#8217;ve commented unless my comment was particularly impassioned and I&#8217;m eager to see the response. So I&#8217;m happy that subscribing to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cocomment.com\/\">coComment<\/a> is part of this project. I&#8217;d like to keep up with these conversations better, because it&#8217;s so easy to forget where you commented when you&#8217;re keeping up with hundreds of blogs.<\/li>\n<li><em>Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week? <\/em><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t think I comment at the same blogs, but since I don&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/otherlibrarian.wordpress.com\/2008\/04\/25\/a-rise-in-the-halifax-local-network\/\">Ryan<\/a> wrote about how he&#8217;s been using social software to grow his local network, I commented because I thought it was awesome. When I read a post on <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.penelopetrunk.com\/\">Penelope Trunk&#8217;s blog<\/a> that really bothers me (which is frequent&#8230; that&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve decided to unsubscribe&#8230; I don&#8217;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&#8217;ll comment. Sometimes I&#8217;ll just comment to say &#8220;congratulations!&#8221; or &#8220;great post!&#8221; I haven&#8217;t seen any pattern to where I comment and I frequently do so in places where I&#8217;ve never commented before.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Next I&#8217;m supposed to look at how my commenting measures up to what is suggested in the <a href=\"http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/software\/top\/special-lifehackers-guide-to-weblog-comments-126654.php\">Lifehacker guide<\/a>. Here are their suggestions and my thoughts on how I&#8217;ve done:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Contribute new information to the discussion.<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t comment for the sake of commenting.<br \/>\nKnow when to comment and when to e-mail.<br \/>\nRemember that nobody likes a know-it-all.<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t post when you&#8217;re angry, upset, drunk or emotional.<br \/>\nDo not feed or tease the trolls.<br \/>\nMake the tone of your message clear.<br \/>\nOwn your comment.<br \/>\nBe succinct.<br \/>\nCite your sources with links or inline quoting.<br \/>\nBe courteous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>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&#8217;t like to write something on someone else&#8217;s blog if it&#8217;s not going to add to the discussion in some way. The only exception to that is when I&#8217;m adding my congratulations in response to someone&#8217;s good news. In that case, I think redundancy is a very good thing. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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&#8217;s better to wait than to react. I have made some big mistakes in this area in the past, and it&#8217;s probably led to my reticence in commenting in the first place. I&#8217;ve learned from people like <a href=\"http:\/\/walt.lishost.org\/\">Walt Crawford<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/freerangelibrarian.com\/\">Karen Schneider<\/a> that when in doubt, it&#8217;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 &#8220;right&#8221; publicly may be great, but it doesn&#8217;t feel good to know that you made someone else feel like crap. I don&#8217;t comment anymore when I feel bad or angry. And I&#8217;ve learned not to comment on sites like the <a href=\"http:\/\/annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com\/\">Annoyed Librarian<\/a> because it&#8217;s futile and just feeds the bad behavior of her &#8220;usuals&#8221;. Letting go has been a hard lesson for me to learn, but I feel a lot better when I do .<\/p>\n<p>As far as being succinct, well&#8230; if you read this blog, then you know that&#8217;s pretty much impossible. But I&#8217;ll try to do better next time. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first activity in the comment challenge is to do a comment self-audit. Here&#8217;s mine: How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? It is so&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-comment08"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}