This will be easier for me, and it will also display the comments under the commenter's name, rather than requiring me to write "X writes:" and then put quote marks around the comment — quote marks or the dreaded italics. I've resorted to italics when the comments have a lot of paragraphs, and I don't like how they look. They're harder to read.
Anyway, I've greatly appreciated the willingness of some commenters to email comments, and I'm not changing my standard for publication, just trying to make things look better and work more fluidly. The wait time for publication will vary depending on where I am and what I'm doing.
ADDED: What is my standard for publication, you may wonder. I tried to sum it up in the message that appears under "Leave your comments" and above the compose window: "things that I think readers will find rewarding" and "I encourage brevity and substance and discourage personal attacks and repetition."
This is a standard I impose on myself, and I don't want my efforts undermined. I only post when I've found something new and different, so I don't want comments that repeat whatever it is you'd like to say about the general topic. The post is a prompt, and you can go in many different creative directions, but make it new. Think of the reader. I go for brevity and humor and surprise. Make it fun to read.
Posts
29 comments:
The Rock.
1. It isn’t dark.
2. It doesn’t look like a human head.
3. What other mistakes from 100 years ago need to be corrected?
@David
Congratulations for being the first person to comment on the blog in the new system, but why did you put the comment here? You have to go to the post you want to comment on.
Maybe I need to rewrite this post. Does it seem like I'm saying put all comments on this one post?!
thanx for explaining the italics usage, i tried to figure it out, and was at loggerheads
(we Can still say loggerheads, can't we?)
I will say that my likelihood to comment has been going down steadily since the birth of the internet (literally - dialup uucp) and your "moderated comments" experiment has really accelerated that. In a good way. I'm much more likely to put in more time to write a better comment and even more likely to abandon a comment half formed.
-XC
Ann -
Great improvement in terms of efficiency! Thanks for doing this.
..RB
Thanks for redoing this. Brevity...it's a problem for me. Always has been. I'll work on it.
Reminds me of a story. No, wait. Nevermind.
Temujin
It was clear to me that I should have commented under The Rock post, but I wanted to try your new system.
I’m glad you’re flexible on the comments. There have been a number of your posts from the past few months where I would’ve enjoyed seeing the thoughts of some your more stalwart contributors.
Any chance that Paladin will ever come back?
Boo!
Kidding - I like the change.
Surprise - I can’t read!
No comment.
Think of the reader
Yes, think of the reader. But in the case of an email to you, you are the reader to think of. If I want my email to be published, I try to make it something you will find interesting--related to the topic, but maybe not exactly on topic, a bit of riffing--and not something everybody's already thinking, but not too outside of what everybody's already thinking. And it always helps to draw a connection to another of your posts.
That said, sometimes I send you email I know you won't publish--either I can't help myself and think it needs to be said even though I know you won't think it needs to be said, or because I think you'll find it funny even if it's not what you're looking for. Cartoons and 30 Rock clips, usually.
Cool.
“Be bold. Be brief. Be gone.” A mentor of mine used to give me that advice. Had to tell me more than a few times, but has served me well.
I have really enjoyed the quality of the comments, but would like to see a few more. Hope this makes it easier.
I'm still confused about what gets the nod. Sometimes I make a comment that I think is trite and it gets posted. Other times I consider myself clever and see nothing. Sometimes I feel like I'm like an ancient village elder who has instituted certain rituals to make the crops grow, but when that fails, I make up even more rules to explain why the last rule didn't result in a bumper crop. How do I garner more produce?
Well done, Ann. I know that sifting the chaff out of the wheat is a difficult task; I wanted to make sure it's not a thankless task as well.
“Be bold. Be brief. Be gone.”
This reminds me of advice to caddies, sometimes attributed to Curtis Strange, known to be somewhat curmudgeonly: 'Show up, keep up, shut up.'
Just yesterday I had restrained myself from emailing you to say that the comments that get published can often add a lot of interest, still; so why not find a way to encourage or allow or publish more of them?
Thus this reader is glad to see you make this change. Hope it works out well.
Excellent commenting solution! I am enjoying the increased engagement already. I hope moderation doesn't become a burden again.
Also, while I am here, please reconsider drawing. I miss the rat!
"Brevity...it's a problem for me. Always has been. I'll work on it. Reminds me of a story. No, wait. Nevermind."
You have done many great comments in the longer mode, and I don't want to discourage them. Sometimes my posts are longer, but I'm always trying to be concise and hold them back from going long. What I don't want people to think is that longer is better and then to try to lengthen them so I'll approve them. I'm afraid your really good long comments caused other people to think that going long is the way to get published. That's not the secret. Being pithy and concise is best, but you can end up being long while pithy and concise. And that's why I encourage people to think of the reader. Will the reader really read all this or see blocks of text and jump right over them?
"Yes, think of the reader. But in the case of an email to you, you are the reader to think of...."
Yes, but I was a reader in the editor position and therefore thinking about the other readers and filtering. And I'm still doing that. There's just as much of a filter now. It's just a different mechanism.
"Excellent commenting solution! I am enjoying the increased engagement already. I hope moderation doesn't become a burden again."
Thanks. This change is to make it easier for me too.
Original Comments (OC) on your blog were better than most blogs. That said, the new moderated emailed comment system made me stop and think, "Is my proposed comment a mere passing thought, unworthy of emailing, or does it add some value to the Althouse post?"
Hence so few emailed comments from me since the change, and perhaps also an explanation for my ratio of successful comment submissions. I hope to continue asking that question under this easier-to-submit regime, before I hit "Publish."
Just curious- was this method an old option unutilized, or has Blogger added new functionality to allow this? In short, this looks just like the old moderation method, but with some sort of e-mail kludge. If new, it should help you do your work by using the e-mail functionality to direct to spam folders.
Just saw this post after sending you an email on "Almost Heaven". This seems like a good idea, and if it makes your life a little easier...
Like tim maguire, I have considered Ann Althouse to be "the reader". I'm flattered you publish anything I write, and I have been a bit surprised you've published as many as you have.
And like mikee, I find your current policy encourages humility. Not a bad thing to make the readers think before they "speak."
It is so interesting to me to see what others think on the topics you choose and start off. I was glad to see 22 comments just on the change.
"Just curious- was this method an old option unutilized, or has Blogger added new functionality to allow this?"
It's an old option that I had considered but rejected. Why did I reject it when I made the decision last spring? I thought it would look for readers as though things were the same but just slowed down. I had to convey the message that things needed to be different. There were some bad actors who were massively wasting my time and I want to concentrate on writing post, not monitoring trolls whose agenda is to destroy this blog or to steal the platform I built up to keep dumping the same stock verbiage about cliché issues.
"In short, this looks just like the old moderation method, but with some sort of e-mail kludge."
It's the old moderation method, which was alway possible to do in email or on the comments moderation page. I have 2 options, but it's irrelevant to your experience, just a matter of which displays better and works faster for me.
"If new, it should help you do your work by using the e-mail functionality to direct to spam folders."
I hadn't thought of that. Yes, that is a way to deal with some problems if I want to get fancy about it.
great. (Brief enough?)
Nice to see more comments now that it's easier for you...
Thank you Temujin for your dedicated blog comments during the letters to the editor phase, as you always have great insight.
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