A couple of people have taken me to task for not responding to their comments or not replying immediately to their emails, pointing out that blog etiquette means I’m supposed to reply and reciprocate by visiting their blog.
Well, phooey to their snarky idea of the “rules” of blogging.
I try to reply to all emails I receive but it can be a week or two before I have time to do so, thanks to the demands on my time.
I also emphasise “receive” as my ISP’s spam filter tends to filter out emails sent via gmail, Yahoo! Mail and a couple of others. I’ve tried disabling their filter, but then I get far too much spam so people should use a mail provider that’s less likely to see your address regarded as spam.
As for replying to comments on this blog, I do my best to respond a couple of times a day but I can’t reply to every individual comment that’s left. I have a croft to work, boys to look after and a life to lead—all those come first.
Finally, visiting other blogs in response to people coming here and leaving comments. Yes, I do visit some and I do leave comments on a few, particularly where I feel I can make a useful contribution or help.
But reciprocating visits from other bloggers must, by necessity, come a long way down my list of priorities.
As always, if you don’t like my approach or attitude on this, then don’t come here and don’t leave comments. But if you do, then I will try to respond here or via email and I may, at some point, visit your blog.
Good for you, Stonehead, you tell ‘em. I’m in the camp of “no obligation blogging”. One does what one does when one does as it feels right and fits ones values.
I’m really going to have to go to bed. The quality of my written English is going to pieces, which is always a sure sign that my brain is even more frazzled then usual. Another post to clean up tomorrow, the next day or next week…
Well stated Stonehead. I’m in complete agreement with you. If blog reading is reciprocated, comments left - that’s a nice perk. However, there are no ‘informal”rules of blogging which is good, because then we can all get on with our varied lives and occupations. That you respond to comments, given the great value of your blog and your very organized and busy life, amazes me. Your blogs are informative, you share your knowledge of farm-steading and efforts at self-sustaining life. A lot to admire! You do not need to respond to this! G
Don’t sweat the small stuff Stoney. The truth is that you don’t owe anyone anything for blogging. Blogging by it’s very nature is a giving activity. If after a day of providing for your family and still finding the time to blog, you still want to correspond and read other blogs then I say good on ya. However anyone that demands your time and efforts probably deserves neither.
Good on ya mate!
Blogging is great, but most of us have to work for a living. It scares me when people have time to comment on everything. they can’t be working if they have that kind of time, so what is their opinion worth?
Happy farming!
Who are these self-absorbed amateurs who think they know blogging etiquette? They are incorrect. Trust a person who makes her living off blogging and who wrote a major University paper on comparative etiquette, they are incorrect in the extreme.
There are rules for blogging?? Oh, well that’s something else I have learned.
I don’t have a blog myself, but read this one and Bean Sprouts every day. I have also contributed to a few forums in my time, but found that it was simply not possible to do all that I wanted and needed to do in the real world and be a forum member too. In fact on one forum it seemed to be a major thing to hit 500, then 1,000 posts then 2,000 and so on. Everyone busy congratulating each other when a milestone was reached. I did wonder how I was supposed to do that and also have a real life!
museditions has put it in a nutshell for me. Well said.
I think they’re stats junkies. People who only visit other people’s blog only in an attempt to get their numbers. Quite sad, really.
And if they’re not stats junkies, they’re just snarky and need a kick up the pants. Hence this post.
I’m with the others. Frankly I’m amazed you have the time or energy to write your blog in the first place.
Time is the easy part. I can always find five minutes here, 10 minutes there. Now, for instance, I have the Big Lad ready for school, the Wee ‘Un is tucked up on the sofa (he has a cold) and the Other Half has just left. Everything is in order so I have a few minutes spare before the school bus arrives and the next stage of the day kicks off.
Mental energy is another thing altogether. From early spring through late autumn I write most posts of an evening, after 10pm, so there are days when I can’t write anything and there are days when the quality of my writing is abysmal as I can barely string two words together. Last night was like that as I was still doing paperwork and pricing weaners until almost 10pm, and then I had a few posts to write. I managed to finish two and draft another for finishing today, but by 11.05pm I was done.
I enjoy writing, though, and the blog is an extremely valuable source of social contact for me, so I’m quite happy to continue, although I do get a little tetchy with fools, twits and snarks. Of course, you’re suppose to charm the last with smiles and soap but I’m too curmudgeonly for that!
How absurd! It’s your blog and you should do what you want with it! You’re not a free advice service to be tapped into whenever someone feels like it! The fact that you write such detailed posts EVERY DAY is surely enough?
If they don’t like it, they should go elsewhere!
As for why I find time to blog, Sarah H (a student doing the University of Kansas’ Media and and Evironment course) summed it up very well when she wrote:
Expecting someone to respond to every message and make reciprocal blog visits is ludicrous. It is like expecting a person to visit every takeaway that drops a leaflet through your door! If I get a (semi-personal) letter through my door saying a total stranger is interested in buying my house (happens a lot round here) I’m not obliged to phone tem to say no thank you. I don’t have to fill and leave out a bag for the local charity just because they put it through my letterbox. My Door, my letterbox, my house, my life. A blog is no different, your comments page, your blog, your world, your life. You don’t have to live it the way someone else says!!
Phooey indeed! I wonder just when some of these people leave their computers.
As for why people blog, I suppose there are as many reasons as there are bloggers. I do it because I like the social interaction in English, living in Japan and mostly speaking Japanese in my daily life.
I can’t remember when I stumbled across your blog, but I love it for the gardening, the similarities in the climate to where we live now, and the tast of Britishness in your cooking and the landscape in your photos.
I don’t need you to visit or comment on my blog! I am happy simply to lurk around yours. Lurrrrk, lurrrk…
Okay, have stopped laughing enough to write a comment now. My goodness, you really do attract some strange and wonderful people, don’t you!
I have difficulty in imagining how anyone thinks comments like that might in any way help their case. If increasing their stats is what they’re looking for, being obnoxious isn’t exactly the way to go. I’m definitely not bloody-minded like you are, but my nature is perverse enough that someone trying to force me (or guilt trip me) into doing something is going to have exactly the opposite effect.
you can’t please everyone, so no point even trying
It all comes from the trend that is blog communities. People want to think they are being heard so as Stoney says they turn into stats junkies. I know I was one for a month or two now I’m back to not caring. It’s worse if they have monetised thier blog as they don’t actually care if you read or not as long as you visit. Getting you to comment just makes their site look busier to prospective advertisers so in the long term makes them more money.
I’m all for encouraging people to comment but some people just have to realise just because they spend time on your blog doesn’t mean to say you’ll want to, never mind have the time to, look at theirs.
Stoney, they can’t simply be stats junkies. Nobody is stats junkier than I am, and I wouldn’t behave that way; particularly since it’d be counterproductive.
They’re narcissists. Spoiled children. Or spoiled grownups. They poke at the world and demand to be noticed for their mere existence rather than their accomplishments. You’re better off without them.
I doubt those people gave this as much thought and concern as you have. Life’s too short to give something like this a second thought.
Yep, no obligation blogging is the way to go. How does the fact that you type some words into some software make you obligated to do anything for anybody? Do these people have a contract you signed?
You write articles. Lots of people like to read them, that’s nice. But if tomorrow you decided you couldn’t be bothered blogging anymore, and never wrote another thing - that’s up to you. If you decide you’ve been doing the self sufficient thing long enough and feel like a change, so you use this blog to try your hand as a Hollywood gossip columnist - well frankly I’d be astonished, but that would be your call. If you started writing a pack of lies about how you were rearing rare-breed jackalopes for the burgeoning Scottish bush meat market, it’d be up to your readers to figure out they were being spoofed.
For all we know you could be an 83-year-old woman in Winnipeg with a vivid imagination and amazing skills with Photoshop who has been having us all on from the beginning. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.
Mel, your last paragraph had me guffawing—because that’s exactly what a few readers of the blog believe. That this is all an elaborate hoax.
Yes, they really do believe that, but from the way they write I suspect they also believe in alien abduction, that the FBI and CIA were really behind 9/11, that Prince Philip and MI6 actually run Britain, that the UN was set up by the Illuminati to destroy the US and enslave its people, and that a secretive race of reptilian overlords lives below us in vast, concealed cities…
Anyway, our latest hoax is that it’s bucketing down rain so the Wee ‘Un and I are sowing seed and potting out in the sun porch. Good fun!
…you mean there really isn’t a race of reptilian overlords living below our cities? I just enjoy reading your blog. No reciprocation required!
Those people snarking at you also, clearly, NEVER worked on a farm.
Like you have time in the spring to do the nicey-nice?
Sheesh!
For all we know you could be an 83-year-old woman in Winnipeg with a vivid imagination and amazing skills with Photoshop who has been having us all on from the beginning
Looks like Mel has rumbled you Stoney!
Thanks Mel I now have kebab all over my computer screen!
you mean… this is not written by an 83 year old woman in Winnipeg? now you have spoilt it for me!
phooey indeed to blog etti..thingy.. I’m with you there.
Just look at the photo’s, guys. He’s one of the reptilian overlords.
Well said! Networking is good, its one of the things I enjoy about blogging but there should be no obligation involved, life happens outside the blog…
total agreement it’s you life you do what you want with it, It that is visiting and commenting on other people blog your welcome to do it. If you don’t want to you don’t have to simple as that.
I am with those who say that it is up to you to reply, if you want to!
Perfect!
A little while back I received a really unpleasant & ascerbic comment, as a result of a post I had written regarding the fact that some people appear to think that, just because you write a Blog, it somehow gives them “ownership” of you.
I’ve had complete strangers (who didn’t even necessarily identify themselves) ask direct & probling questions about where we are, how our business runs, or when they can come & stay (for free of course) & many other - frankly worrying - requests for highly personal or Commercial In Confidence details.
At the end of the day we are private people with private lives & a private home (& have not yet launched our business); the Blog was originally written for family & friends who asked me to write as they enjoyed my accounts of ‘Life on the Funny Ffarm’, so much. I’m delighted that our readership has since expanded far & wide, to all corners of the globe - however, all the more reason (with identity theft being what it is) to sadly have to be a little more circumspect these days.
I too always make every effort to reply to comments, emails etc; but began to find it frustrating when receiving requests for information about all manner of subjects, & furnishing the querents with what I hoped were detailed & informative replies - only to not even receive so much as a brief acknowledgement for my efforts. As you of course appreciate, unchecked these things can take up all too much of the precious little time we have left in a day; which I don’t mind, because like you I love to help if possible; but it’s disheartening when people demand so much & give so little - because they somehow have a view that just because you write a Blog, you owe them everything for reading it!
I often leave comments & thoroughly enjoy reading the informative, humorous & insightful Blogs of others - however I appreciate we all have lives; & would never expect someone to feel somehow ‘obliged’, just because I’d visited their site.
So fear not; you’re not alone, Stoney….oh & I demand a reply within the next 20 minutes, BTW