Thing #12

I think it is extremely important to remember that readers cannot hear the "tone" of you comments. As a well established "class clown", I have found that internet communication can lead to greater misunderstandings. I once inadvertently offended a friend of mine who totally misunderstood what I was saying. I take full responsibility for this and in the 15 years since, have made great efforts to be direct and sensitive with my comments.

In "How to comment like a king or queen", Cool Cat says "Criticize kindly". I agree with this 100 percent and would even say "Critique kindly" as I find the word criticize to be too harsh. Blogging is a microcosm of personal interaction and because of it's lack of face-to-face involvement, I think bloggers do not realize the sting of their comments. I am a very sensitive person and take things to heart to a fault. For example, Cool Cat used a Star Wars reference to identify negative comments. I personally did not like this as a Star Wars fan who has used my interest to bond with some of my students that share this interest. I even made a Star Wars comic in an earlier post.

In Drape's takes, he "critiques" a blogger for their failure to reply to comments. I think this kind of pressure does not take into account many things including busy schedules, different personality types, etc. I do like the fact that Drape did qualify his critique by mentioning the blogger may have personally e-mailed replies to comments or communicated in a different form (ex. Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

I made comments on five different Library2Play blogs. It is interesting how truly unique each blog is as none of the five were similar and you could tell the personality of the blogger in each one.

For the two blogs of personal interest I commented on Tom Watson's great day at the British Open (golf). I find this public blogs tend to have too many offensive comments. These comments usually have obscenities with one letter replace to avoid detection.

I also commented on Pauline Jean's new album (she is a friend of mine - we were paralegals in a law firm). I am so proud of her efforts and she is a role model.

I found this "thing" interesting because it forced me to do something I am not totally comfortable with, comment on other's blogs. I do suffer from "am I worthy to comment" syndrome or as I like to call it "how dare I have an opinion". I am getting better but, I still suffer from reluctance to speak out.