Centennial Commentary

by Rick Rockwell

Over the weekend, this blog reached its second major milestone: 100 comments.

So thanks to all who have added their thoughts to these electronic pages.

Too bad that this milestone did not come with our original core of writers, but it is interesting that this comes as the staff is shifting here. Perhaps that means there will be more discussion here in the future.

As noted in “A View From the Tower,” it seems as if this blog has lagged behind a bit in the commentary department. So that makes each comment that is here all that much more valuable.

Some bloggers, such as Darren Rowse discuss the role of commentary often on their blogs and say it is an essential element of this new medium. One blogger, Jakob Nielsen, has noted that the rate of commentary on a typical blog comes from about nine percent of the audience, although the core commentators are really only .1 percent of the audience.

As a comparison, only about .2 percent of this blog’s audience has left a comment. But after observing a number of blogs, I think that’s rather typical.

One might argue we are just talking to ourselves because the authors of this blog (who are also part of the audience, albeit an insider bunch) have left 57 percent of the comments. Of course, when you have a writing group of more than 20 authors, that is bound to happen. As these pages revamp a bit, perhaps the amount of outside comments will also increase.

The 100th comment was left by an anonymous commentator on the post “Nancy Dis-Grace.” That’s rather fitting, because that’s the post with the most comments on this blog.

Only 14 percent of the comments are left by folks who list themselves as anonymous. Actually, that number is higher because some folks use hard-to-trace handles instead of names. Such is life on the internet.

We send out special thanks to the most prolific outside commentator: News Media Studier. Please check out her blog, “News to Me.”

And feel free to comment on the action as we tinker under the hood a bit with this blog.

(Photo courtesy of melodi2 from morgueFile.)

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