Have your blog reading/commenting habits changed?

[marilyn peake]

I participate on less blogs than I used to, so that I’ll have more time to write. I personally tend to join online discussions in which there’s enough intellectual discussion and debate to feel like it’s taking place in a classroom or a really interesting cocktail party. (Your blog has definitely been that way, with your informative blog posts, the tone you set, and the many well-thought-out and lively comments from people contributing to the discussions.) I tend to leave online groups when there’s a lot of turnover and I don’t know most of the people anymore and when the discussions move in a direction that completely leaves me out, e.g. I’ve left groups in which newcomers talked down the idea of getting an agent and talked up the value of self-publishing, and then started to market their own expensive book promotion programs. I felt out of place and just didn’t have much to contribute. I think commenters probably leave blogs for all kinds of reasons, e.g. if they feel like they aren’t a good fit with the rest of the group or the moderator, they feel left out of the discussions, or they simply get too busy to continue.

[MoiraYoung]

About the only thing that's changed is that the more blogs and forums I join, the less likely I am to be fully active in each one of them. I only have so much time in my day, and I can't sacrifice all my writing time to social media. Part of me feels rude (though that's probably just the good ol' Canadian politeness at work), but I have to split my loyalties. And that means I don't necessarily participate in the comments section the way I used to, even though I read every post.

[knight_tour]

About the only thing that's changed is that the more blogs and forums I join, the less likely I am to be fully active in each one of them. I only have so much time in my day, and I can't sacrifice all my writing time to social media. Part of me feels rude (though that's probably just the good ol' Canadian politeness at work), but I have to split my loyalties. And that means I don't necessarily participate in the comments section the way I used to, even though I read every post.

This has bothered me quite a lot. I enjoyed myself more when I just followed those blogs that truly appealed to my tastes. However, it seems that the only way to convince more people to read my own blog is to give tit for tat. Only a very few people ever bothered with my blog until I began commenting and adding myself as a follower on their blogs. This makes me have less and less time for the things that I really want to do each day.