Have I blogged about this before? I'm not sure. Well anyway.
In the last few years it seems to have become a blog etiquette thingy that bloggers must answer each comment individually, and make direct reference to the things that were said.
I guess a lot of commenters don't read the other comments and don't care how the blogger responds to them, but I'm kind of anal, as well as nosy, so I tend to read the whole lot. And then get really annoyed, because the blogger's response will typically look like this:
"Mr Smartypants, you know what? I think you're right.
HedgehogInABlender, I thought so too, but then I read Tolstoy and all was revealed.
ABCToG, I expect so. Apart from the plums.
Pantygirdle, hahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!"
...and so on. Sometimes there will have been double-figures-worth of comments before this happens, and although I may be anal and nosy, I'm not quite so intrigued that I can be bothered scrolling up and down to cross-reference every comment to its response. Even responses to my own comments often leave me a little stumped cos I can't remember what I said in the first place.
In fact it's surprisingly easy to either quote a line from the original comment or otherwise make your response make sense so that everyone will understand what the hell you're on about and not just the person you're aiming it at.
I'm not singling anyone out here. You all do it, you bastards. Well, most of you.
So anyway: STOP IT.
Thankyou. That is all.
Slow Crafting
2 days ago
10 comments:
i find it hard enough to keep up with my comments anyway. (and i hardly get any comments)
can't you do cntl+f to find the blogger's name if you're that curious??? ;)
Yes B, but then you have to scroll back to where the response was to read the next one! Or even CtrlF again, but then you have to type in another name to CtrlF on. And there are usually several of them. I'm too lazy for that. It gets very tedious very quickly. I just end up feeling irritated by the whole thing.
Am I the only one? Probably. Maybe. I dunno.
PS I know what you mean about keeping up with them even when there aren't that many of them. I guess I'm also subliminially irritated by the example being set, ie that we're all supposed to answer every single comment. But damnit, if you're going to do it, do it properly!
And before anyone starts pointing fingers, these responses were immediately after the original comment, so no scrolling or CtrlFing required.
It's pronounced "Contrulfing" by the way. In case you were wondering.
I am hopelessly inconsistent about this on my own blog, partly because of time constraints, partly because I forget, partly because sometimes I post an informed and thoughtful response and then the commenter concerned never comes back to read it. And also because sometimes I'd need to e.g. say 'thank you' in 12 different ways, and I don't know 12 different ways to say 'thank you'. I've been wondering whether to ask my readers what they'd like me to do, maybe I'll get around to that sometime.
I think it's okay to do the
Fluffybun: you're absolutely right
thing if your response is immediately after the comment you are responding to, but otherwise I wholeheartedly agree BS. I like it when blog owners respond to comments, though, so I wouldn't discourage it.
In fact the best thing about some none-Blogger blogging environments is that a commenter can choose to be informed by email when that specific post has new comments so you can follow how response to your own comment continue.
I think we're being somewhat harsh on ourselves when really the limitation is with blogger (and many other blogging platforms). In discussion forums you have threads which enable related conversations to stay together, so they keep their context. Blogger does not provide this mechanism, so we're forced to scroll, search, copy, paste and generally get a headache.
I am guilty. Of all of it.
i've never imagined that anyone else reads the comments, let alone the replies. The late Mutleythedog always copied the full comment along with his reply - it was classy, i admit, but who has the time?
also, i don't think many people are as curious (nosey) as you and me (i often do this too) and i will go with the majority. if hardly anyone wants the blogger to do this, i ain't gonna.
anyway, afaik you don't read any of my blogs, let alone the comments ;)
and thanks for sharing the pronunciation - i'd always wondered! :)
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