Solving the Comment Problem

Blog writers like comments. Some bloggers just want traffic, especially if they are getting money from advertisement, but many of us would gladly give up a lot of traffic for more comments.

Problem is, it seems, many people aren’t too keen on leaving comments, even when they find a specific post quite interesting.

So, Alejna devised a nifty chart with shorthand notation for some comments. Maybe that’s what I should use here. Although… Alejna’s chart items are funny and appropriate to her blog. I guess I should devise my own chart.

Actually, it reminds me of the marking scheme I use with student assignments, in decreasing order of preference:

  • IF: Insightful
  • OC: Original and Creative
  • HP: Honest and Personal
  • TR: Thoughtful and Reflexive
  • EX: Appropriate Examples
  • ED: Elaborate and Detailed
  • CSF: Concise and Straightforward

I often put two or three of these in feedback to a single assignment. So an assignment can be both insightful and using appropriate examples. It may sound arbitrary, but it works very well for me as it does correspond to the way I read assignments. I really look for insight, first and foremost, but conciseness is a positive feature.

So, maybe I should have a chart for blog comments which would be similar to this. Of course, my own criteria for my own blog posts aren’t really the same as those for student assignments. And the order of preference seems to be quite different for blog posts. But there’s something about this which makes sense to me in a weird way.

Ah, well…

11 thoughts on “Solving the Comment Problem”

  1. HP, TR, EX, CSF

    And I know what you mean about the willingness to trade traffic for comments. I get a lot of meaningless search engine traffic these days, and I’m pretty sure those folks don’t even really read the posts most of the time. Comments are proof that someone out there is actually reading.

    (I really should comment more. I read far more posts than I comment on, but I often don’t have the time and/or energy to comment when I first read a post. I tend to go back later. Like now. I read this when you first put it up, and here it is 2 days later.)

  2. @Alejna: Thanks for the elaborate comment. As you say, it shows that my post has actually been read, as opposed to having been viewed due to keywords. As for reading before commenting, I sometimes do this but I easily get overwhelmed. I end up with a rather long list of thing I want to keep, read, blog, comment, etc. Should really get into GTD.

    @Randy: It’d be really cool if you could code this. Unfortunately, WordPress.com is a closed platform, so it’s unlikely we would get the benefits on these blogs. But the concept is neat. As a course management system, Moodle makes it possible to rate and grade pretty much anything. Between that model and the Digg/Slashdot model, something could be done to encourage this kind of minimalist participation…

  3. Getting Things Done. The title of a best-selling book on time-management but, more interestingly, some principles in the book have been integrated into a series of tools for time-management. Haven’t read the book itself but it seems like it has an elaborate system of priorities based on the time tasks take, etc. The 43Folders blog is a good place to start.

  4. Sadly, I have read the book, but apparently haven’t internalized it (or perhaps externalized it) enough to recognize it in acronym form.

    That book inspired me to buy a label-maker. And for a while I was a bit more organized. And then, well, life caught up with me. Maybe I should start making more labels again.

  5. Or embrace the messy.
    Too bad you mentioned the acronym part. Was going to joke about how fast you were able to read the book between reading my comment and posting yours! 😉
    (Because I like your sense of humour, I tend to think of jokes when I read your comments… It’s fun!)

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