There's Critics Out There!

I’ve been doing this strange business of blogging for almost a year now (look out for the Birthday Message on 27 September). I’m quite pleased with my apparent audience, as indicated by visits on Site Meter. I’ve managed to reach the lofty status of a Crawly Amphibian in the TTLB ecosystem, which is roughly half way up (or down, depending on how you look at it) the “food chain”.

Like many “jobbing bloggers” I don’t get as many comments as I would like, and the vast majority of those I do get are from a pair of fellow bloggers with whom I seem to have become friends without ever meeting either of them! As you might expect, these comments, and others from bloggers whose blogs I comment on from time to time, are universally positive and often much wittier than my posts.

I was, however, surprised recently to find a couple of rather irate comments from someone who clearly disagreed quite strongly with what I had written? Not being used to this scenario, I was somewhat taken aback. Why did this person apparently care what I wrote? How should I respond to his comments, which were not abusive, carefully argued, and indicated that he may know more about the subject I was writing about than I did?

In fact, the two posts concerned were primarily links to other sites rather than original statements made by me. The reader was effectively disappointed that I had “lowered the tone” of my site by agreeing with these other writers, and giving them publicity (however minor!).

In the end, I replied to the reader’s second comment saying that, at the end of the day, nobody forced him to read The Voice of Reason, but I did concede that he might have more extensive knowledge of the subject concerned than I. I suspect his political affiliations are quite different from mine! I have no intention of deleting the posts, but I won’t delete his comments either.

I am still intrigued that he cared enough to comment at all. Blogging: it’s a funny old game!