Why I answer all comments
January 11th, 2008How would you feel if you were invited to have tea with friends, and the host, after having done all the talking for half an hour, then turning to the guests for feedback, receives each comment with a mere: “OK, next comment, please”, and then “all right, thank you, what was I saying,…” and carries on? How would you feel if you were attending a lecture by some specialist you absolutely love, and the lecturer leaves the room during the Q&A session, leaving you and your co-lecturees to discuss between yourselves?
In real life, I love to squeeze remarks into a discussion when I feel comfortable with the subject and the people, and if my wittily pertinent attempts meet with indifference, I will soon stop trying and leave the discussion on the first occasion. This is exactly how I feel when I visit blogs in which the author does not reply to comments. I am under the impression that the commenting feature is enabled simply for the sake of freedom of speech. I do agree that few comments are ever written in a way that calls for a reply, but when utter silence follows the comments section, it makes me doubt there’s somebody on the other end of the line.
In short, I just wished to explain that I find it hard to keep up with first-person blogs in which comments never or seldom get a reply. I’ll pick just two examples: the QC report (good thing she’s no reader of mine). Q’s writing is fabulous. I found the blog totally addictive. But when I decided I’d “de-lurk” and give commenting a try, I found my initiative as effective as (pardon the vulgar French expression) peeing in a cello. A couple of posts later I deleted the entry from my feedreader. In fact, I’d probably still be a fanatic reader if comments had been turned off altogether, clearly signifying that this was more like an online book and less like a group of friends. The same happened with Tim’s Mother Tongue Annoyances.
Knowing that my blog-reading time is not stretchable to infinity, you will understand I’d rather spend some time with people who are friendly and act friendly, than with people whose friendliness I can’t assess. Now because I am a fervent observer of the ‘do as you would be done by’ principle, I try to answer all comments here, lest I should lose a single reader. Obviously, this is more work for me, but I must confess I like commenting so much that I love an opportunity to comment on any blog, including mine.
P.S. there is something I have to ask: do you come back to read my replies to your comments (I personally keep coming back compulsively until I get a reply whenever I comment on someone else’s blog) or should I drop the practice because I am the only one who cares?
I like comments, and replies, and I come back to read the replies.
The reason my blogroll is short that I have limited time to spare, and part of it goes on reading and commenting. It seems to me a courtesy - people are doing me the honour of reading my blog and commenting, and therefore it behoves me to extend the same courtesy to them. But I have double standards, in that I do enjoy a couple of blogs where the authors don’t respond to comments, and it doesn’t bother me at all.
I have also moved on from blogs where people never reply to comments. No matter how excellent the blog, it starts to feel like a slightly one-sided admiration society. The conversation is what it’s all about.
That said, I don’t automatically reply to every single comment I receive, but I feel bad about that and plan to do better.
And yes, I do come back to read your replies. Clearly I am also compulsive.
Another compulsive here…
Whenever I comment on a blog (yours included) I do check a few times for a reply. Obviously I love to find that the author acknowledged my comment in any way. Like you, if I put my soul on several comments and I never receive any acknowledgment that at least they were read, I lose interest eventually.
On my blog, I also try to reply to most comments. Lately, with a newborn on board it’s been hard.. But I read your last comment to my birth announcement and really liked it : )
I used to be one of those who never responded to comments, and I’m really trying to be better at it. I always meant to respond, but put it off until “just the right response” came to mind - which, of course, it never did. These days I’m trying to not be brilliant but just present.
When it comes to other people’s blogs, I almost never remember to go back and read replies to my comments. It’s as if I say my piece and wipe my hands of the matter. I am just too scatterbrained for this whole process!
One trend I do like is the “subscribe to this comment thread” feature I’m seeing more of (and have installed on my own blog).
Oh yes,I absolutely come back here (obsessively) to read your replies, not only to my own comments but also to others. Half the fun of your blog is that the comments section is taken so seriously. I do read blogs in which the author doesn’t respond to comments (QC being a prime example), but I never (or very, very rarely) comment on them.
Becky - I do indeed read at least a couple of blogs where comments hardly ever get an answer, but they are not first-person blogs: either they are collectively written or they are relatively impersonal technical publications.
Maria - what are you doing here? shouldn’t you be in bed? (cos that’s where I’d be if I were you)
Charlotte - sometimes I envy you with all the comments you get, but then I am glad I do not have 25 replies to come up with every other day.
Diana - welcome here. I have once subscribed to the rss fead for the comments section on a tech blog, and I got my e-mail drowned over a couple of days as the post received tons of congratulations for the brilliant solution. If there was a timeout option, maybe I’d try. But I guess I still prefer my quick-and-dirty way of keeping track of comments.
Emily - I owe my readers an awful lot for the quality of the comments section here. There is hardly ever a spelling mistake, and I have never had comments from readers who had clearly not read my post. Therefore: thank you everyone.
I think you commented on my blog recently, and I did not reply, for which I apologize, as I do like to respond. It can be hard to come up with responses — they begin to seem silly or repetitive — but I think it’s definitely worth while, as I value getting responses to my comments from others. Only those blogs that are truly great will draw me back when I don’t get a response to my comments, and this doesn’t happen often.
And I do return to read your responses — I follow the method you created, in fact!
Did I create a method? I think I am merely copying what I saw on other blogs. I once thought I’d do like David (over at Very Short Novels) does, editing each comment to add my response below the commenter’s text, but now I think it feels too much like a series of short dialogues and not like a discussion.
Don’t worry, I won’t be leaving your blog for a couple of unanswered comments. I know it can be awfully time-consuming to try to come up with a suitable answer to comments that are not written in a way that calls for a reply.
I don’t remember how it was I decided to reply to each comment with the editing feature on my fiction site as you described above, mandarine, but I acknowledge it does create little dialogues and rarely gets anything like a discussion going. I have to admit I don’t think I would know how to participate in such a discussion. I don’t like to influence readers by expressing my own opinions on stories so my replies are often oblique rather than fully responsive. I do very much value the comments and commenters though, and feel a powerful tension to reply as quickly and as appreciatively as possible.
Although I would not do it here, your “face-to-face” approach is probably the right format for your site; it actually looks like admirers in a library, queuing to have their copy of your very short novel signed by the author. Each whispers a compliment, and each receives the much valued autograph.
Well, okay — you taught me a method then.
This is really interesting to me, because it’s something I struggle with.
I believe that it’s important to return comments by visiting the commenter’s blog. I try my best to do that, though it results in dozens of tabs being open at once on my laptop. The way I make sure I get to blogs when I don’t have time right that moment is to simply open the blog in a new tab, so I can visit when I have time. However, I don’t have the time to keep up with everyone, because I also feel it’s important to comment on the blogs of people who comment on mine.
However! I’m terrible about answering people’s comments on my own blog. There’s a blogger whose discussions I really admire (Tales from the Reading Room) and how she makes sure discussions happen is she answers everyone’s comments. But when I’ve tried that, I’m the one who feels met with silence. Because while there are some like you who come back to check on responses, there are many more who never come back to that post at all.
So I really only try to keep up with that sporadically, and that’s mostly on weekends or days off work, when I have the time.
As far as your question, no, I don’t come back and compulsively check to see what the blogger said to my comments. I leave way too many comments at way too many blogs to keep track of that. But if I comment, like I did here, and then the blogger visits me, when I get back to the blog, I might notice a post I commented on and check to see what the response was, if any.
Your post made me feel like I should work harder on all this, but it’s difficult because my blogging time is really limited, so much so that I can barely keep up with my own rule to post something at least once a day.
Now I’m off to see what you said in response to my last comment here.
I am glad my rule only involves posting something once a week. Otherwise, I’d be having serious time shortages, what with the reading, the writing, the editing, the publishing, the commenting, the answering comments, the visiting of commenter’s blogs, the checking back on replies to comments I left elsewhere… phew, when I put it like this, blogging is some job.
Interesting discussion. For me, it is mostly a question not so much of time, but of timeliness. If I can’t reply to comments within a day, I figure everybody will have moved on and there isn’t much point to responding. I find it difficult to respond to every comment, especially if the responses are similar. I do like to have the affirmation that people are reading and responding to my posts, but it’s hard to turn the comments into a dialog. I wish more people would comment on my blog — even disagree — so that there could be more discourse. But, I think that happens rarely on blogs.
I definitely return to the posts I have commented on in order to see where the discussion went from there. I have to admit that I feel “included” if someone has responded to my comment.
I’ve tried to do the same on my blog, where I respond to each comment. I am not certain which is the best form to use: David’s method which involves replying to each person individually, or Litlove’s method where responses to five or six comments are aggregated in a single larger post. I use the latter approach because the “large comment” format enables me to order my responses any way I like, the aim being to keep the discussion going.
There is an exception to the above policy though. There are some comments which are well meant and I greatly appreciate them, but I cannot think of a useful reply. In such cases, I go to the commenter’s blog. Very often, it happens that there is a post I would like to comment on. While this avoids a direct response to the comment on my blog, it still ensures that the communication channel between blogger and reader isn’t zapped.
Cam: indeed, there are not many comments with adverse points of views from which to start a real discussion. I believe those who disagree often refrain from commenting (especially in our well-mannered blogs). One way to catch the attention of those potential commenters would be to play Devil’s advocate and write the controversy into the article, so that people can take sides. I may try this some day if there is a subject I cannot make up my mind on.
Polaris: visiting the commenter’s blog does seem to be appropriate in terms of standard implicit blogging etiquette, but I cannot help feeling that it is not the same as having comments answered (unless of course there’s a reference to the original comment in the cross-comment, but then it sounds like private dialogue, because the other commenters have not seen the original comment, if you see what I mean).
I just found your blog, thanks to another blog link. I’m new to blogging, I’ve only been on since Oct of last year. It’s taken me a little while to figure out that discussion is the point of blogs - it’s not enough to put my ideas and thoughts out there, I want feedback too. Otherwise I’d keep a journal. The point of blogging (or one of the reasons) is to connect with others in a public sphere. That means, I think, in terms of etiquette, that if someone has taken the time to respond to one of my blogs, I want to reply back - at least, say “yes, thanks for your comment,” if there is nothing else I can add. I will go read other bloggers, but I don’t leave a comment on every blog addition - just the ones that spark a reaction in me. so, I then pay attention to what has others writing on my blogs - book reviews? book lists? daily life? thoughts on the world? - a combination? - so that I make my blog interesting for both myself and whoever comes by. The reason I blog is because I love books and I want to discuss them with others. But I have lots of other interests too, and books lead to other things, such as your interesting - very interesting philosophical views on life, on eating, farming, quality of life etc - on your blog. and I did read the Dahlia review from today, so I’ve gone to comment on that too!! So that, as said in a previous comment here, the trail of discussion can be viewed by everyone.
anyway, just some thoughts from north of the border.
I fully agree with you that discussion is precisely what makes blogs so appealing and so different from any other type of written communication. Welcome here. According to my tacit rules of etiquette, you’ve just won a place in my ‘readers’ blogroll.