It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for The Insecure Writers! The IWSG is an online group created by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers. You, too, can join us anytime!Hello IWSG-ers and honored guests! It's that time of the year, when kids and teachers are heading back to school, summer is turning to autumn (hypothetically, anyway; here in New England someone forgot to tell summer that it's over), and, in my house at least, vacation-time is really over. I always feel like this is the real New Year, when everything starts again; I guess I was in school too long for that feeling to ever really wear off.
So, in honor of this new beginning, I'm going to finally run a little poll I've been meaning to run for months, which has to do with comments. So many of us spend a lot of time reading other blogs and commenting, sometimes to ask a question or contribute to a discussion, and sometimes just as a way of saying, "Hi! I was here and I enjoyed this!" I thought we all might benefit from knowing the general consensus on responding to comments. Not returning visits, but responding to comments left on our posts.
The only issue is that I cannot for my life find a way to embed a simple poll in this post without a) signing up for a service I don't want, b) making all of you scroll around the page and search for it until you get frustrated and give up, c) sending you to a results page full of ads, or d) breaking my blog.
Yes, I'm sure there's an easy way, but I can't find it. I am feeling insecure about this. Moving on.
SO, I'm going to ask all of you lovely people to please go ahead and answer two easy questions in your comments, and we'll call that a poll and move on with life and pretend that I am a very tech-savvy blogger.
Before I ask the questions, let me explain: as I've mentioned, I'm struggling a bit with time. I read a lot of blogs and leave comments, and I love writing, and then there's my day job and my family and my friends...and I'm looking for something to give a little. I'm wondering if responding to comments is something I might be able to give up. I often feel like I'm just responding to let people know that I read their comments, instead of responding to an actual debate or question. And that's starting to feel like something I might not need to do. However, I will always, always respond if you ask a question or raise an important idea or even just leave a long and thoughtful response.
Here are the questions I'd love for you to answer (and please, be honest!! I will not be offended!):
1. Do you think it's important for a blogger to respond to all comments on a post?
2. Do you check back to see if the blogger has responded to your comment?
My own answers:
1. No, I don't think it's important for a blogger to always respond to comments. I know we're all busy and we all have a lot going on, and I don't take it personally if a blogger doesn't respond to my comment - unless I asked a question or raised a new idea, or left a very long, unusually thoughtful comment.
2. Sadly...no. I'm sorry!! I used to subscribe to comments on every blog I visited, but now I visit too many and my inbox got so clogged that I had to delete everything. Now, I only check back if I did one of the things I mentioned in my first answer: asked a question, raised an issue, or left a long and thoughtful response.
Please leave a comment and tell me what you think! I'll report back on the overall results next week. Thank you!
