Making comments on blogs

It's great to see the ISWO blogs - lots of different styles of writing and different choices of presentation. Part of blogging is self-expression. Generally when a blogger writes, it's because he or she believes that there's something worth writing about. Sometimes even when there's little evidence that anyone is reading it can still be an act of catharsis to put those words together.

But the blogging experience can be greatly enhanced by your readers (when they exist) -- the supportive and/or critical comments, the prodding for clarification, the excitement of seeing an idea spur a tangential idea, and the ongoing conversations that can occur in response to certain postings.

And there's reward from being the one to make the comments as well, especially when the blogger gets back to you. On the creative side, there's a bit of skill and art involved in this. First you have to find posts worth responding to. As your PLN builds up, this becomes easier and easier. You'll find that you're following links recommended by people whose ideas you trust (even if you've never met them) and your area of interest just sort of opens up in front of you.

On the technical side, it's really pretty much like replying to a forum posting. That being said, it took me a while to realize that for some blogs, it might be necessary to click on the text that says "0 comments" in order to be able to make the first comment. In some blogging systems it's more intuitive than others.


Without any editorializing, I'll point you to a fairly recent blog posting by a writer I follow. This one got over 500 comments
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/

With any kind of opinion writing or feedback, there's are ways of saying what you mean in a constructive way. I think you'll find the above posting and the hundreds of comments it generated cover a pretty large range of writing styles from polite and constructive to, well, not so polite. It's an interesting case study.