Thing 4: Are Comments Conversations?

So I've been reading other blogs and commenting more than I ever have before.  In the past, I was more of a lurker (and I think someone else used that term, so I can't really claim it as my own, but I don't remember who), reading and thinking about other people's ideas, but not really responding to them in any official or public way.  Now, however, for lots of reasons, I'm excited to do that.  A big part of that change is knowing more about the bloggers whose pages I'm reading, and it's also significant that I'm reading blogs that say something to me and have real relevance in my life and work.  Of course, I'm also doing it because I have to for the project, but I found myself posting to blogs that aren't involved at all with 23 Things, so it's not entirely a mercenary impulse.

I liked Cool Cat Teacher's page about how to comment like a king or queen.  Some of what she said seemed very common sense to me, like linking to a page you write about in a post of your own, but some ideas were ones I hadn't thought about at all, like using a comment tracking service.  I haven't set that up yet, and I don't usually tag posts or comments, but I totally see the value in doing so.  I have to say, though, that I was more impressed by Sabah Karimi's page on how to write intelligent comments, perhaps because it was significantly more concise (which not surprisingly, is one of the things she advocates in good commenting).

What both pages stressed though, and what I find both fun and frustrating, is that it's the commenting that makes blogging most like an actual discussion, more of a dialogue.  And I see that to a certain point, but conversations tend to be more immediate.  While it's advantageous in certain situations, especially with those who don't know me or my discourse style or sense of humor well, to have time to mull over the exactly right way to phrase something and choose my words precisely, it also precludes some of the authenticity of a spoken conversation.  Spontaneous and genuine reactions are a part of the give and take that happens when people speak to one another face to face, for better and worse, and they're absent from carefully crafted comments.  And of course the catch-22 is that I don't really want to read comments or posts that aren't carefully crafted.  It's not just the artifice or pretense of a drafted, revised, polished response to a comment that bugs me or breaks down my sense of posting and commenting as conversation - it's also the time delay.  I'll admit that I'm disappointed when I don't see responses to things I've posted.  When I do see them left later, I've sometimes moved on from thinking about the subject of my post, and I don't pick up the conversation the way I would were I across the table from someone and it were happening in real time.

Still, I'll continue to comment, and see what kinds of sort-of-conversations there are to have.