Comment Comment
A note on a milestone: this blog received its 5000th comment last night. More than 900 of those comments are for my post on Eyelid Twitching.
That number, of course, does not include any of the spam comments that regularly shower the site (more than 7000 have gotten past my spam filters and had to be manually removed; the filters have caught and blocked hundreds of thousands more–and no, I am not kidding or exaggerating about that number).
5000 comments may sound like a lot, but it averages out to between two and three comments per post. Not too bad, but not as many as blogs with smaller readerships. I think one of the reasons for this is that I am not very good at responding to comments; if readers feel that the blog’s author is not reading the comments, they will be less likely to write more comments. Many prefer conversation of a sort, instead of just leaving a note.
Actually, when you leave a comment on this blog, it generates an email to me, and I read every one. I’m just not good at correspondence, is all. Most times I read it and agree, and have nothing to say. I should respond more, though. My apologies if you commented and I said nothing in response.
“Actually, when you leave a comment on this blog, it generates an email to me, and I read every one.”
I just wish your site generated e-mails to US as others lodged comments, so (a) we could see your reply (if any) to what we’ve said, and (b) a quasi-forum style debate could ensue.
I don’t believe your software does anything like this at the moment? I asked once or twice before but probably forgot to go back and check to see if you’d replied … pity there wasn’t a reminder e-mail or something
Yeah, I wish the same too. I haven’t upgraded to MT 3.3 because of spam concerns, and I probably won’t. I tried to install it for a friend the other day, and the new install procedure is hopelessly technical–the exact kind of documentation which I hate which presumes that you are an experienced programmer or something, when they obviously could have made it more user-friendly for people without sysadmin experience. It used to barely be something a regular person could do, but not any more.
On the other hand, WordPress with Askimet has been ballyhooed by a lot of people, and I found out that it can be set up automatically using a script installed by my web host. So I might be switching–though I still don’t know if there’s a plug-in for WP that allows it to do what you want. I have to study what WordPress can and cannot do first…
Meh, same thing happened to me last time :\