Responding to "How to Be a Good Commenter"

John Scalzi, at his Whatever blog, wrote a very interesting piece called How to Be a Good Commenter. In the main, I agree with his points, though I do have somewhat different priorities.

1. Do I actually have anything to say?… A comment is not meant to be an upvote, downvote or a “like.” It’s meant to be an addition to, and complementary to (but not necessarily complimentary of) the original post.

Well, yes, but… I go to a lot of ABC Wednesday posts, and they’ve posted a picture of a flower, or a waterfall, and if I like it, I might indicate its beauty. And I don’t mind, frankly, an essentially “like” comment to what I write; beats indifference. Maybe I want to thank someone for doing something I can’t do, or say something I wish I had said; I want to affirm the creator for his or her efforts. That noted, I do try to abide by the complementary notion. I think the fear of this first rule creates a lot of lurkers, who may visit a page but never say anything.

2. Is what I have to say actually on topic?

Now that I DO care about. I’ve found that some commenters are like

Comments policy

Here I am, just a couple months short of six years of blogging, and I’m reading where Wayne John thinks all bloggers should have a blogging policy. He’s probably right, but I cannot get very excited about it; i.e, the topic bores me. In all the time I’ve been blogging here, including the Blogger iteration, I have deleted exactly ONE comment that wasn’t spam. It was a nasty remark about a picture of a dear friend I had posted; I didn’t like it, and I took it down.

The Akismet on the WordPress blog is really good at catching spam, and I approve every comment anyway these days; ultimately, it’s just easier. I recveive an e-mail when I get a comment and respond as soon as possible. I also check the Akismet to make sure it doesn’t reject real posts; it used to do it a lot, especially to a couple of ABC Wednesday people. And particularly entertaining spam I just might let slip through.

Some bloggers rail against the one-line comment; I guess I’d rather people say one line they really mean than three lines trying to meet some arbitrary threshold.

Except through the spam, I just don’t seem to get a lot of irrelevant links that people want to post here.

Wayne John linked to