Comments makes the woman

"Come on now, don’t tell me, when you wake in the morning or get home from somewhere, you don’t check your email and your blog for Comments right away" Time Goes By

"We want to love, we want to be loved, we like to share little parts of ourselves with others, and we like comments too. Comments! Feel free to leave one" Nappy Forty

"Yes, yes, yes I do the same thing, when I come in first thing I do is check for comments and mail" From Time Goes By and Millie

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > "Choose a topic and stick with it. Be generous in linking to others. And for god's sake, allow comments; it's not a blog if it's not a dialogue" From Ronni

It occurs to me lately that the comments shared on each others blogs have become a big part of my blogging routine. I love to read them. I also love to write them. When I read what someone has to say I become involved, energized and connected, and enjoy sharing my opinion, encouragement or support. I especially like it when there is a back and forth dialogue like the time we discussed blogabulary! I start to feel like I belong to a family and become quite charged up. One time I was so excited I had to leap up from my desk and walk around the apartment for awhile. Ada felt the vibes. She jumped up from her nap even as she was curled up in her favorite chair, and followed me about blinking her eyes sleepily.

Have you ever been over to Marc Cooper? Sometimes he has a hundred or more comments to each posting!. Every now and again he replies. Often he scolds his commenters who are railing on about this or that. He threatens them with blocking them forever and always if they don't abide by the rules, which include only three comments a-piece. To date, I haven't noticed him blocking anyone. He's just too kind and accepting, I think. He allows every person's point of view!

The other day I received an e-mail from a friend who said that while they had not made a comment on my blog they wanted me to know they were still reading it and thought my postings were "great." I appreciated hearing that because I have to admit that sometimes, on those out-of-confidence-days, I feel almost abandoned, unacknowledged, and lonely when no one leaves a comment. I start wondering if my posting was badly written, perhaps mediocre or probably boring.

I wrote about this once. It was in the context of Marc Cooper, when asked his advice to novice bloggers during an interview, saying "For God's sake, have something really interesting to say. The world's already brimming with people who have nothing to say. No reason to have more of them clutter up the Internet."

Mostly I think about comments as a way of relating to people. As an early childhood educator and counselor, I have learned that listening and relating to people is very important. I have also learned this by being a child, myself. It was very painful for me when people ignored me or forgot what I had told them moments before. I see it as a way of respecting others. I took relationships very seriously and still do. One of my colleagues jokes about how when she e-mails me she knows for sure that I will reply within 30 seconds. She laughingly tells that sometimes I reply even before she has written!

Mostly we learn about being loved through actions and behaviors more than thoughts and words. Infants will not know they are loved unless significant adults in their lives stroke, hold, kiss, cuddle, smile at, talk to, coo at, sing to, hug, carry, or look at them. In our blogger's world actions and behaviors are through the words, expressions of self, opinions and ideas we share by writing on a screen. We relate to each other through our comments.

Please don't get me wrong. I am sure we can all live without other people's comments. Indeed I know of at least two bloggers who don't want to be bothered with what everyone has to say. I also know of friends and colleagues who are shy or private to air their views publicly. To each her own. The beauty of the blog is that I can always delete a comment if it is too offensive or inappropriate.

I just have to admit publicly, even though it renders me a wee bit vulnerable, that it is fabulously exciting when I check into my site, and find that while I was away, humanity has stopped by to leave behind gifts of words, opinions, ideas, joys, encouragement, support, anger, sorrow, information, poems, or stories.

Comments

[Ella]

I think we all (almost all) can recognize ourselves in the quotations about comments. And yes we need to feel confirmed and if we don't get answers to our questions we might feel our questions are stupid.

[Adriana Bliss]

I check for comments, I want to know that someone thought about something I wrote. When the comment is particularly nice, I imagine myself a cat and purr. I've adjusted though to not getting comments - I've been posting on the internet for a long time (message boards, critiquing websites) and know that if nobody commented, it was because my piece was so good, so brilliant, the people were jealous. ;) When I was a little girl, whenever I cried on my mother's shoulder that someone said something mean to me, or didn't want to play with me, she would tell me they were just jealous. I always laugh when I think of her advice, when I hear her telling me that. So...I look at lack of comments as a moment with my mom because when there's silence, there IS always a twinge of...gasp...they don't like me!

[Adriana Bliss]

And a note...this was a great post to wake up to, Tamar!

[nappy40]

Adriana, sometimes the post was so great there is nothing else to add. I read several blogs and a lot of the time the posts are like short stories or small pieces of someone's life. The writing is excellent; I won't leave a comment but I will check back the next day.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

I love comments, and I know in advance that some of the things I post won't get as many comments as others. In general, my fiction and poems get fewer comments than my topical pieces -- and the "creative" stuff is what I care most about. But that's fine. I know there's less to say about it.

Actually, Tamar, I just wanted to leave you a comment...

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

PS: Adriana, I tried to post a comment on your blog too but as you say, blogger's giving trouble today. (It gave me a lot of trouble last night and this morning.)

I liked your post about your four-year-old. It reminded me of when mine were that age. Treasure her, as I'm sure you do!

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

And Nappy40, I just tried to place a comment on your blog and blogger pulled the same stuff on me. I had a really substantive comment about that organization you mentioned, too. I have a little experience with them, as a concerned parent, and I am in no way ambivalent about them.

[Tamar]

One of the reasons for writing this post came as I tried to leave comments on a few of the "blogspot" bloggers I read this morning and found it wasn't working. For example, I, too, loved the piece about Adriana's four year old very much, and I wanted to reply to Nappy 40's piece called "Danny" where she talks about leaving a comment.

Richard, how interesting that we comment less on your creative pieces! I wonder why that happens. More food for thought for me ...

I had been thinking about bloggers and comments for some time now. Why some allow them and some don't. Whether their purpose is for support and encouragement or critique. With the politico-bloggers I have fun reading how serious and important everyone becomes as they share their opinions.

Hmmm ... I wonder ... did I write this post so that people might leave comments?

[Danny]

Yes, Tamar, and it was a good idea! I also crave comments and then spend a lot of time wondering about the pathology of that. It makes me nuts if I am blocked from leaving comments (I also tried to leave one on Nappy40's site this morning) and I can't even comprehend people who don't allow comments on their blogs. That strikes me as just plain rude ("Here's what I have to say and I don't give a damn what you think."). A few months ago I never dreamed I'd be adding the topic of "comments on my blog" to my palette of neuroses! Ah, the wonders of new technology...

[franchini]

I'm not quite so concerned that people are reading my posts, although they have to in order to comment. What I really Iike is the fact that I have connections, even if they are only brief, with people of all ages and from all over the world. Nice post Tamar.