Q&A Friday #90: Do You Ever Leave Comments On Other Blogs?

06 Jun, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Question: “Hawkins – Do you ever leave comments on other blogs? If so, do you use your own identity, or do you do so anonymously or with a pseudonym? If not, is just a question of not having time to do so?” — huckupchuck

Answer: I very seldom comment on my own blog or on other blogs for two reasons.

#1) I figure that the time spent working on a comment that will be read by a small subset of the people on the blog could be better spent working on a post that will be read by everyone on my blog.

#2) I’ve been blogging for so long that I’ve gotten a little numb to things said in the comments section.

* If someone insults me in the comments section on my own blog, 99 times out of 100, I just don’t care. If the insult is particularly egregious or inappropriate, I delete it and ban him. If someone insults me in the comments section of another blog, I don’t ever care.

* If another blog insults me, I’m usually content to ignore it, but if I do decide to respond, I want to do it on my own blog rather than in their comment section.

* If someone compliments me, I appreciate it, but I’m so swamped I don’t have time to give him/her a proper thank-you.

* If someone gets something wrong, I figure someone else will correct him/her.

* If I do see something worth responding to in a comments section, I’d rather try to work it into a blog post.

That being said, I will very occasionally comment on blogs, like on this post over at Alarming News (Karol consulted with me on my latest column at Townhall and then wrote about the same subject).

As a general rule, I post under my own name. If I don’t, it’s almost always because the system automatically has me post as “anonymous” and I forgot to include it.

PS: I do have pseudonym accounts at places like Fark, Digg, and Free Republic, but I got those to submit stories, not to comment, and I seldom take the time to write anything besides a promo for a post on RWN.