Hit-and-Run

Years ago, shortly after 9-11, when online message boards were spilling over with fearful posts and dire predictions, I began posting as The Voice of Reason.  My posts were more or less the same each time: Don’t panic.  The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are miniscule.  You’d extend your life more effectively by being tested for cancer than hoarding Cipro for an anthrax attack that will never come.  My posts would quickly disappear in the flow of paranoia on the boards, but occasionally I’d find a reply from someone grateful for my reassurance.

Constant Comments

With my Inner Curmudgeon missing, I’m afraid I may have turned a bit whiny about comments here on Bud’s Blog.   In a comment to thesinglecell, I lamented that our posts on Amy Winehouse received only one comment each and then, in Missing Curmudgeon I actually wrote, I went back and reread my post, Creativity and Amy Winehouse … possibly the best post I’ve written in a fortnight … noting that I’d only gotten one comment … then complained about the one comment I did receive.  Yikes!  I need my curmudgeon back!

Pressed for Words

Yesterday morning, after I finished my Morning Pages and a few book keeping tasks, I logged into Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog to take a one last look at my Monday post before publishing it and to see if I’d had any comments on my Sunday post, Sunday Funnies.   Usually, it’s a good day if I have two or three comments the day after posting and it’s not unusual for it to take a few days for my small cadre of regular readers to turn up.   But this time, my WordPress Dashboard showed 21 comments awaiting moderation.   Oh, %#$*&, I thought, I’ve been spammed … but when I took a peek at a few of the comments, they were legitimate.   My eyes wandered to my Stats and I saw that I had over 600 views for the day so far.   Yikes.  Yippee!

Comments on Comments

When I look at my WordPress Stats Window, it seems apparent that the number of visitors to Bud’s Blog per day is much greater than the number of comments on my posts.    That is to say, a substantial number of readers either comment only rarely or are lurkers.   While the latter may sound sinister, in internet parlance, a lurker is someone who reads discussions on an interactive internet forum (such as a message board, blog or chatroom) but never participates by adding content.  This sort of lack of participation has been observed by bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba and dubbed the 90-9-1 rule which suggests that internet content in such a forum will be created by 1% of the participants, while 9% may edit or modify content, and 90% will view the content without contributing, that is, be lurkers.   In information sciences, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule says that in any group activity, 20% will produce 80% of the activity.  So I guess it would be expected that many readers might not participate by commenting … but that doesn’t keep me from wondering why they don’t.   Readers are, after all, more than statistics.