Suburban Guerrilla

« Weird

Ex-Pothead »

Boo Hoo

Jun 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am by Susie

You know, the main thing a blogger gets for all this work is feedback, a sense that it doesn’t fall into a black hole.

So how come hardly anyone comments anymore? Is it really that big a pain in the ass to register?

Posted in Uncategorized

14 Responses to “Boo Hoo”

on 28 Jun 2007 at 10:49 am1just john

I’ve written to you more than you’ve written to me, haven’t I?
on 28 Jun 2007 at 10:51 am2Susie

Depends on how you look at it. I’ve put up almost 20,000 posts in the past four years - doesn’t that count for something?
on 28 Jun 2007 at 11:11 am3nora@alphabitch

I had a bit of a hassle remembering my username & password and tried logging in a coupla times and then forgot what I wanted to say. I might have registered several times, actually.

But it’s not that big a pain in the ass to log in now that I’ve changed the password to something I can probably remember.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 11:15 am4just john

Susie: I’ve had a similar feeling for most of the EIGHTEEN years I’ve been online with this handle.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 12:07 pm5joel hanes

> Is it really that big a pain in the ass to register?

Apparently, since you had far more commenters before your site required registration.

IMHO, it’s not a big deal to register for one site — but the sum of having to register an ID and remember a password for the many many sites that require them is a significant burden. NY Times, LA Times, WaPo, Chicago Tribune, google, yahoo, Salon … not to mention banking and travel and slashdot and online stores …

So a couple times I started to comment here, and ran into the registration barrier, and thought “another ID”?! and blew it off.

I guess that provides a telling measure of the value I placed on my own comment (not very high, if I was deterred by simple registration as a “cost”).

You’ve run into the economic problem with the net that so worries the content industries: when the alternatives are free, even the slightest cost (price) is a strong deterrent. There’s lots of other blogs where one can comment freely without registration, even using a different pseudonym for each posting. Your erstwhile commenters (me included, until this moment) have gone there.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 1:03 pm6rw

Suzie,

I agree with joel. His comments, about comments, are appropriate.

You write an excellent blog, and I read it regularly. You also have good taste in music and you give good links.

I wish I could support your site financially, but I’m short on cash. Tell you what, move out west and I’ll help build you a cottage. (I’m a carpenter.)
on 28 Jun 2007 at 1:37 pm7phillybits

I read your blog almost everyday.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 2:15 pm8YYY

The EMPIRE has won! We are just hiding out waiting to THEM to come and cart us away!
on 28 Jun 2007 at 2:16 pm9YYY

Bonus post -

In my the post above: First to = for
on 28 Jun 2007 at 3:10 pm10Izquierdo

Hey, guys, don’t you have cookies that automatically log
you in here once you’ve registered?
It works for me.

I understand Susie’s frustration.
It’s become a ghost town here of late.
I feel funny being the only commentor in so many threads.
Sometimes I think it’s just me, Unpartisan.com, and
a couple of other blogbots.

BTW, Susie, is there any way to eliminate (or at
least hide) those nonsensical automated “replies”?
on 28 Jun 2007 at 3:29 pm11Linkmeister

Waves! I’m here, I’m here!

It would be easy to say that sometimes what the post says needs no further comment, and maybe it’s too facile, but sometimes it really is true. If I’ve got nothing to add, why fill up the comment box?

I know, excuses.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 4:28 pm12nora@alphabitch

Yeah, Izquierdo — although I hose my cookie file (and the IE cache & pretty much everything in the history) frequently while I’m working because it doesn’t play nice with some of the other stuff that I have to use here at my office (and my laptop is connected to the same network, but at least I can use firefox for non-work things on that machine — can’t do that here). Doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem if I’m not using IE. Of course it’s another microsoft product that’s causing all the problems. Don’t get me started on that.
on 28 Jun 2007 at 5:15 pm13k

Hey Izquierdo - I’m not a bot!
on 29 Jun 2007 at 3:22 pm14teenchy

Honest answer: I fell out of your life without adequate explanation. You asked me to consider doing something for you and before I could reply, I got some bad news from some doctors. What you wanted me to do took a burner so far back that I forgot about it, and never gave you the courtesy of a reply.

Long story short: I’ve been getting treatment that has made the bad news better, and a corporate job that helps pay for it. You can probably relate, but you probably would think I’m a sellout by taking that job.

In any event I hoped the Knox job would springboard you into bigger an better things, and I hope it still does.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Boo Hoo

14 Responses to “Boo Hoo”

Leave a Reply

My Liberal Identity:

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Tags

Pages