Last week I issued a challenge to friends, readers, and folks who generally lurk in the shadows.  the responses were, themselves, interesting and pretty consistent when it came to explaining why someone may or may not comment on sites or blogs that they read:

• The point was already made (don’t want to be redundant), and tied to that:
• Nothing new to add except “I agree”
• Folks who use RSS readers like Google Reader, find clicking through to the site to comment impedes their likelihood of commenting (though a few comments did mention the different scripts and applications that allow for commenting straight from a reader)
• It’s time consuming, and tied to that:
• Marking a post to return to later to pay closer attention to the response often leaves starred items forgotten until much later, if at all
• Too much time has passed to feel like a comment would be relevant
• And the most surprising was the number of folks who voiced a fear of sounding less witty, informed, or “intelligent” than the post warranted.

I hope those of you who took on this challenge were able to better estimate your reasons for not commenting, and I hope that by forcing yourself to comment, you were able to expand your own boundaries and shoo away some of those fears! 

So…. How did it go?  What did you learn about commenting or your pattern for commenting in the process? What was the experience like? And, perhaps most importantly, will you continue?

Tags: Bloggers, Community, Culture of Commenting, social media