BLOGGERS - DARE YOU ANSWER THE MOST PERPLEXING QUESTION IN THE WORLD?*

*Well it is in my house.

One of the things that often bemuses me is just why some people leave frequent and lengthy comments on other people's blogs, yet leave only occasional and scant remarks on mine - even when I posted first on the same subject.  Or why readers flock to comment when another blogger admits to remembering absolutely nothing about the comics he's borrowed from the Internet, and says so in every post he ever publishes.  Same old, same old in every single post - and there's a couple of guys who even pay him for the privilege.  Maybe they think if they pay (or should I say 'sponsor') him then they essentially own his blog and thereby can make it the venue of their own private party.  I've never yet seen a blog that's worth paying for (or donating to), and that includes mine!

As an example of what I'm talking about, on another blog at the moment the blogger asks a similar question to one that I've posed a few times (with even a very similar title to an old one of mine - and no, I'm not suggesting he copied me) and is inundated with numerous very lengthy comments, including a few from readers of my blog who - if they answered at all - left far shorter responses to essentially the same topic when I raised the issue.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the comments I do get, but I sometimes wonder why some folk seemingly couldn't be bothered to reply to some of my posts, yet write a novella of a response to someone else asking the same or a similar question.

Or perhaps I do understand.  Could it be that people like being able to show off what they know, and when they get an opportunity to reveal their knowledge on some topic to a bunch of other regular commenters, they seize it with both hands?  Maybe there's just not enough participants in my blog to make it worth people's while to take the time and effort to comment when they can save it for a wider audience on someone else's blog.  I'm not necessarily saying that I get fewer visits than those other blogs (I wouldn't know either way), just that I seem to have fewer and shorter responses from some of those who do drop into my site.  (There are exceptions of course, and you may be one of them.)

Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if I get little or no response at all to this post, but someone else will get dozens of lengthy replies if they ever ask a similar question (about someone else's blog obviously).  So tell me - where am I going wrong?

Posted in: Cartoons