I was just reading the other day that the first African American school girl to be integrated into an all white school in Louisiana is now just 65 years old. I'm 62 and I remember the television coverage of school integration, civil rights marches and white backlash rallies. Our nation still has a long way to go to achieve equality for all. I don't know if we'll ever get there, but I share his dream and always will. Our treatment of enslaved Africans, their descendents and Black Americans from a variety of ancestral lines, is our national shame. We will never be a great nation until this is solved.
Now, onto another topic not remotely related to Dr. King. But maybe he'd have something to say if he were around.
Blogging Etiquette
I have searched the Internet far and wide for this topic, and the only discussions are for business blogs. So it's all about maximizing your ad dollars, building your audience to build your income and things like that. When I specifically searched the topic as it relates to personal blogs, nothing came up. Only a description of what a personal blog is.
My real question is: if you visit a blog often, enjoy and make comments, but the blogger never responds to your comment (they reply to others on occasion) nor leaves a comment on your blog, can you assume that your participation is unwelcome? I don't want to make a pest of myself, after all. I've recently started to expand my blog reading, based largely on the blog list on Robin and Roger's blog. I know them well and we have many common interests, so I figure their list is one that would resonate with me. I also now see many of the same bloggers making the rounds on the same blogs.
I can understand if someone checks out my blog and finds it not to their taste. That's fine. So, I guess I can assume two things about these new bloggers I am reading: the don't find my blog to their liking, and my participation on their blog is a big yawn for them.
In which case I'm happy to remove them from my blog roll and move on. It would be a shame, though, because I am enamored with at least two of the new blogs I am reading. (You know, "I like your blog, why don't you like mine? I thought we were simpatico.") It's kind of like getting the brush off at a party...which is also fairly humiliating. Only temporarily, though. I don't believe in punishing myself with reactions like that.
If you have an input or insight, I'd love to hear it.
Have a great week.
I love seeing that statue. What a grand statement its presence makes. I so wish we lived in a world where his life's philosophy was the true ambiance of the times.
ReplyDeleteAbout blogging, I have no answers. I'll have to think about this.
I thank you for your good advice on the phone. I hope it improves the look and accessibility.
DeleteNo great insight from me. I tend not to comment if there are many others who have already commented. And I never disagree with the blogger who has every right to write what he or she pleases, Just as I have eveery right to read or comment whatever I please.
ReplyDeleteyes, I know what you mean...if I'm the 24th commenter and have nothing new to say, well....
Deleteand yes again, why would we disagree with the blogger? It's like going to their home and telling them the decor is all wrong.
Good to see your photo of the Martin Luther King statue today. I remember when you went to Washington, D.C.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I can't help assuming, I discover more and more that my assumptions are often wrong. Your question reminded me of my experience with a wonderful blog I found by coincidence and referred to today on my post. The blogger never commented on my blog and only once or twice responded somewhat formally to a comment I made on his blog. I kept reading his blog because I liked what he had to say, and I tended to refrain from making comments once I realized that he wasn't going to respond to them. My blogging style is that I rarely comment on comments made on my blog and visit very few blogs. My response to people commenting on my blog is to make comments now and then on their blog. Now that studying Spanish takes up much of my once free time each day, I am posting and commenting far less than I used to, but I don't foresee a time when I will stop blogging because blogging has become an essential part of my creative life with people.
I like what you say about blogging being an essential part of your creative life. I feel the same way. Blogging stretches me, and that I've kept doing it for fourteen years is really a wonder to me!
DeleteRegarding assumptions, I had invited a new friend to lunch in December and she put me off, saying "After the new year." I felt rather brushed off. I just spoke with her and it turns out her mother was ill and dying in Boston and she needed to be there. So much for my assumption that she just didn't want to go to lunch with me.
I haven't a clue about etiquette in blogging. I started blogging purely as a challenge for myself to find my footing when things were a bit too much health wise and I was looking at a massive change in what I had always assumed would be my fit and healthy future.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I got a real fright when I received my first comments. I must admit that I was slightly paranoid because I had promised my family to never allow anybody to find or worse, stalk us in real life.
Now I am just commenting when I have the energy. I love reading blogs and not commenting may seems ungrateful to some but some days, reading is all I can do. I have also learned that I have silent readers on my blog, so there is that.
I don't see comments as an ongoing conversation or exchange between virtual friends, more of an appreciation or recognition of interesting, like minded or controversial individual minds. And for that I love it.
thanks for your perspective, Sabine. I've noticed that bloggers feel very differently about the role of comments and replies to comments. I'll just have to carry on and go where my interests take me and comment when relevant. After all, I began fourteen years ago as a way to write, photograph and document the important and mundane aspects of my life.
DeleteI found your blog, and I enjoy it. I leave comments on blogs all the time, whether I've read them just once or all the time. I'm not necessarily looking for responses. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don't. Whatever.
ReplyDelete