So let me get right to it- I am not big on commenting (gasp!). I have long considered myself much more of a listener than a talker. Now, I have what I consider a good explanation for my way of thinking and how I approach a conversation. I truly love to learn new things, and being very shy as a child paved the way for me to become quite the listener. Over time, I developed my opinions on so many topics, as we all do, but had almost no interest in sharing my thoughts. I am much more interested in hearing what others have to say, so as to gain another viewpoint, thereby increasing my scope of understanding. In short, I like to use others' opinions to augment my own opinions. That said, I have never been a strong commenter, but if anyone needed the minutes read back to them, I'd be your guy.
As far as the assignment is concerned, I see the value in an active blogosphere, the importance of maintaining a conversation through the posting of informative, encouraging, and/or relevant comments. You can't have a community in which no one talks to anyone. In fact, that's the opposite of a community. That's the description for a bunch of strangers who secretly loathe each other. It's like the author of the Blue Skunk Blog said- on the whole, people don't blog "only for themselves." If that was the case, they'd be writing in a spiral notebook- humorous, and true. Bloggers post to initiate a conversation, but a conversation needs more than one active participant (total elementary, right Watson?). I really liked what CoolCatTeacher had to say about blogs and comments- her discussion of the importance of newbies caught my eye. Really good stuff about bringing diverse perspectives to the blogging process. I also took note of her discussion of "Darth Commenter," because who hasn't dealt with one of those? Even if you don't blog, I'm sure you've scrolled down to the bottom of a Yahoo! News article. Talk about ignorant, inflammatory, and inappropriate (don't forget anonymous!) commenting to the max. Yuck.
Alright, this is where I'm supposed to list the 7 blogs I'm going to comment on, why I chose those particular blogs, what comments I made and why I made them. Since commenting is not my strong suit, this will likely take some time, so please consider this short paragraph as the introduction to this "comments on comments" section. More to come!
I'm a lot like you in that I'd rather listen than talk. I like asking questions to move the conversation along, and I think that's kind of how I feel about commenting, too. It's not necessarily that I'm tossing in my 2 cents (I'm completely aware that's exactly what I'm doing right now) but, more often, it's that I'm using commenting to continue a conversation.
ReplyDeleteI've gotta agree with you. I guess I get a little too wrapped up in listening sometimes, and I forget that a well-thought question or comment can keep the converstion going (or at least keep it from going stale!). It's certainly not 2-cents tossing, I really appreciate a comment from a fellow listener!
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