So writes a reader in email about my post last night, where I introduced the Bloggingheads clip with this sentence:
And I said a lot of what I wanted to say back on March 31, 2012, in this diavlog with Bob Wright — resisting the political exploitation and excessive emotion around the case...Back on March 31, 2012... How clear am I supposed to be?!
I'm posting about this now to make a point about the problem of comments and the benefits of going forward without them. I continually faced criticisms and demands for clarifications like that one, and it took energy to respond or to resist responding. That energy could have gone into reading new material and putting up new posts. I had comments for 9 years, and I estimate that I've spent over 3,000 hours concentrating on handling that sort of thing. That's really the equivalent of 2 years on a full-time job.
I find that shocking.
I'm genuinely sorry to lose the good commenters, as I've said repeatedly, and I don't regret the time I spent reading and engaging with them. The 3,000 hours number doesn't refer to that time, only to the time spent explaining or resisting explaining things to people who were not paying the respect of reading what I had taken the time to write. I know some of the old commenters like to say that this blog was all getting off the front page and into the comments. That hasty jump saved them time, but it cost me.
AND: When I did go into the comments over things like this and told people that if they'd read the post carefully they'd see they'd missed or misread something, I'd look pissy or schoolmarmish and that became a whole other matter to needle me about. What a time sink!
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