Blogging for 4-5 years,
Miguel

I’ve often wondered the same thing about comments. What do they mean necessarily? Sometimes I am seeking comments but only because I extended a question to the black hole of cyberspace hoping someone would bestow their knowledge upon me. Unfortunately most of those posts don’t receive comments back, so I may need to work on my presentation or like people have mentioned – I could just be posting at a bad time of day or year.

It’s interesting for me that most of my posts that receive comments are the ones where I feel like I’m being the most human and transparent – telling a story, revealing aspects of myself, including humor or emotions. The ones where I’m regurgitating information that I’ve compiled don’t really spark conversation. It’d be interesting to look back on your most commented posts and see if there’s a pattern amongst the topic or writing style.

I’m fairly new to reading your blog but really enjoy your style and your apparent genuine passion for the current “technologically educational revolution”. You do a great job of conveying your emotions and thoughts through your words.

But I find the same thing happens when I post a tweet on Twitter. Sometimes I am truly amazed at which ones get retweeted by a bunch of poeple and which ones fall on deaf ears. I have looked for a pattern but have not unearthed one.

Happy anniversary to you and your blog and happy posting – comments or not.

I hope people don’t read me wrong in this post. I’m not necessarily craving the comments themselves, but rather, I’m trying to establish what I should learn from the comments.

It’s not that I expect anyone to comment. I’m more than happy that anyone would ever want to even read what I would write. I don’t have any misgivings that anyone owes me a comment or anything of the like. I’m more wondering about the times when someone pauses to share their thoughts on something because they feel compelled to on their own, not out of a sense that they owe me anything.

I’m in this space to learn. For me, I’ve learned the most when the conversations have become more about the people commenting than the actual posts I’m writing. It’s rather selfish, but I love it when that happens. Not because of me or my blog or my writing or even that I feel any satisfaction that people are posting on my blog, but rather because I’m learning.

It’s interesting that even talking about comments on our blogs feels so faux pas. Why should it?

For me, the comments have been the greatest thing about my blog because it includes the diversity of other voices. If I was really only interested in my own voice, I guess I’d just write all my posts in Evernote as I do and keep them unpublished.

I hope everyone hears my tone for what it is here. I feel like there’s so much to learn through the way we all interact on blogs, and I’d like to be here to learn it.

And I’d like to better understand what I should be learning about the way it’s all taking place.

The other night I commented on a student’s blog in Australia, because I was asked to and I was feeling relatively energetic. If I had been very tired, I might have ignored the request. Tonight I am commenting on yours, because I don’t want you to feel bad that I don’t often comment on your blog, even though I read it faithfully. I didn’t comment on your polarized people post because I am an outsider and don’t feel qualified to comment on internal USAmerican issues, although I sympathise.

Sometimes a comment is just a comment. Somebody felt communicative. It doesn’t mean that a blog post without comments is bad or boring. It might have just appeared at the wrong time.

I’ll be interested to see what others say.

That is what happened with my 140 character post — http://jenuinetech.com/blog/?p=110 — the first commenter blew it out of the water. Which was a bit ironic, if you knew the back-story of why the post was even written in the first place.

Alas, I wander.

I have never seen your blog as a comment solicitor in anyway — but have seen you use the comments to extend the conversation.

To judge a post’s worthiness, based on comments, is not a fair assumption.

There are a lot of factors that drive comments. Time of the year is an important once (right now people in the USA are scrambling to get everything done for school). Time of the day is another factor — do you post at night or in the morning. Also, the point of reference for each person is different. (your journey is not theirs and sometimes they have to let the post wander a bit in their mind before they post)

I like what you have to say — and yet, do not always comment on that? is that wrong? hmmm, don’t think so.

Sometimes, you just have to be happy with the post you wrote – regardless of the feedback.