Here comes the 31 Day Comment Challenge. It speaks to the way I’ve been becoming more involved in the community of educational bloggers. I have 74 days until my first anniversary of having this current blog. What better way to celebrate than hone my skills? Our First Task
I have just completed a bit of analysis on my methods of commenting, so I will share the results.
How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? It looks like I leave about twelve comments per week. This is just an average. Some weeks I comment far less. It’s directly in proportion to how many family obligations I have and how much extra work I carry home from the school day.
Do you track your blog comments? How? I have been tracking my comments via cocomment. I learned about this website when Dean Shareski blogged about it back in December. I had some issues with the program slowing down my iMac and I removed the program about a month later. Recently I read a blog post by Sue Waters and continued the discussion via Twitter. It turns out that they’ve had some upgrades. So far, Firefox and cocomment are playing well together. I've also been testing out co.mments as well. It is a site that basically does the same thing as cocomment.
With both sites, I have an RSS feed into Google Reader. It's another example of maximizing my time by having just one site to check.
What do you do with your tracking? At this point, I go back and see if anyone has responded to my comment. As I read the responses of others, I'll sometimes return to a blog to continue in the conversation. I suppose if I keep track of whose blogs I tend to comment on a fair amount, it will help me understand which blogs seem to provide me with the most useful information.
Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week? It varies. My reader has many, many different blogs. I am trying to determine which blogs are of most interest to the type of work I do and want to do. As I find an article that speaks to me, I leave a comment. Over time, there are blogs that I have commented on multiple times. There are also blogs that I’ve only commented on once.
Commenting Behaviors
As far as the Lifehacker post goes, I feel pretty confident about the comments I've been leaving behind. I tend to stay on topic, keep messages that belong in email out of the comment, keep it friendly, clear, and succinct.
I believe I may not always add something new to the conversation, but I do like to thank people for the links I find useful. Sometimes, it's nice to know you helped someone out. If a person reads my blog and finds something useful, I'm thrilled to know about it. I will keep this in mind going forward.
If you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to tag your posts "comment08" at the bottom of your posts.
Image Citation:
Palmeri, Chris. "nice comments." cpalmieri's photostream. 2007 Oct 3. 2008 May 1.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1400/1479661817_e0eccb1ba7.jpg?v=0
I would say at the current rate I'm posting at about 30 comments a week on a variety of different websites. I add new ones every week. Thanks for sharing about co-comment though. I've been looking for a better way of tracking my comments.
ReplyDeleteHi Ann,
ReplyDeleteFor some reason even though you are using the label comment08 technorati isn't finding your posts. We have the RSS for this tag term coming into the wiki so if people use this page they won't find your posts.
Adding a technorati tag for others doesn't appear to be working. So I suggest you add the words "And if you are part of The Comment Challenge remember to tag your posts "comment08" at the bottom of your posts. This will definitely work because technorati searches within the body of posts for the search term.
Contact me if you need more explanation.
Looks like you are already a good comment :)
Charlie:
ReplyDeleteI am hoping once our summer vacation starts, I'll be able to increase the comment count. You're doing a great job though! Good luck with co-comment.
Sue:
I'll have to look into Technorati and see what I'm missing. I've updated the post to include your suggested sentence so Technorati finds me.
Ann
This focus on comments and conversations is a good reminder for me. I've definitely been guilty of not following up on my own comments, and I can't say that I'm doing as well as your 12 comment average per week.
ReplyDeleteI am an avid user of Google Reader though, even for tracking changes to my Google Docs.
We have students who are blogging well, but we could definitely improve their focus on developing a thread of comments and conversation.
Thanks.
Pat:
ReplyDeleteThanks for leaving a comment. Are you working on the 31 day challenge as well? Both websites with the RSS link to my reader help me follow up comments. Good luck with your commenting.
Ann
Hi Ann,
ReplyDeleteLong time since you shared something on my blog when I hosted Boil Down Your Week. I see you Twitter but here I am on your blog for the comment challenge and it's nice to be here and exploring the subject of commenting.
Good to be here,
BonnieK
Hi Ann - nope your post still isn't appearing but I have worked out the issue. You need to log into your technorati account and get it to ping your blog as it hasn't checked for new posts for the last 5 days.
ReplyDeleteBonnie:
ReplyDeleteGlad you stopped by. I think the comment challenge is a great way to extend the way we use blogs. I like the way you did the Boil Down Your Week with the photos. It was only the second time I tried that ongoing project. Your blog is in my reader, but I haven't been back in a while. I'll stop by soon.
Sue:
I am still trying to get the whole Technorati website working for me. It seems like even though I followed the directions on the Technorati website, I still have to manually ping it. Just another detail to get right eventually. Thanks for taking the time to point out the problem. I'm guessing that this challenge is stretching the four leaders of the project if everyone's postings are getting a thorough bit of help as I am from you. I appreciate your help.
Hey friend
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you already used the comment platforms (you are so ahead of me). Thanks for sharing out.
Kevin
Kevin:
ReplyDeleteGlad you stopped by. I'm still having random bits of trouble with the comment systems. Today CoComment complained that I didn't have enough parameters complete (or something to that effect), so the backup system caught it. My pleasure to share.
Ann