Over the weekend, at our host's annual fete, several friends came up to me to express their opinions on some recent posts here on Ish.

Recently, another friend emailed me a comment on a recent post.

Folks, there's a comments function here. Please use it.

I know not everyone feels they have something to say. Heck, I read lots of blogs and don't always comment on them. Lurking is a time-honored activity on teh internets, at least as time-honored as anything is for a medium that's two decades old. But I try (especially on less-trafficked blogs) to leave the occasional comment, even if it's "hey, funny!" or "interesting post!" or "buy Cialis here!" (OK, not that last one.)

Why? Call it Egoboo or Whuffie or what have you, the comment is a way to "pay" your friendly neighborhood blogger. It's the quarter tossed into the busker's open hat. It lets the blogger know that yes, people are reading the damn thing, that readers give a damn, and that the effort is worth it, dammit!

You don't need to write an essay. Spelling does not count. But if you feel the need to say something, if you have an opinion about something that's written here, or even if you just want to say "hey, that link totally made my lunch hour," then speak your mind. Thank you.

PS Curious, I ran the numbers -- at 1939 days of this blog, 3581 posts have been written, making 1.85 posts/day. 6420 comments have been left, an average of 1.79 per post, although a full 11% of those comments were left on the Post Secrets post. Removing that post takes the historical average down to 1.60 comments / post.

M E-L posted this on May 09, 2006
It is filed under Blogs & Blogging, Site News

It is also indexed with the following tags: Comments | Social Capital |