Musings: Playing Solitaire

For the past few days, I’d been blogging and posting, but receiving no comments.

And this evoked musings of a very different sort. Were the posts getting dull? Had people stopped reading? Was there suddenly a dearth of opining in the world?

Then this morning I found a couple dozen comments that had gone unmoderated, dating back several days. So my apologies to those who took the time to write a comment, didn’t see it posted and perhaps wondered why.

Anyway, that snafu prompted me to once again reassess how to handle comments, because one thing is clear: writing a blog is no fun if no one comments. I write plenty of other stuff for newspapers and magazines where I get very little response, and I like the immediacy of interaction that blogging provides. I also enjoy providing a forum of sorts where people with different viewpoints can share their thoughts, and I think the readers do, too. Without that, it’s akin to playing solitaire.

My inclination now is similar to the view I expressed in a previous post about allowing unfettered recreation on the bike path:

Screw the liability worries, spare the poor rangers their poop patrol and treat it as a lesson in folks figuring out how to get along and respect one another.

So please, do show some respect to me, the forum and other readers. And if things start to get stinky and unslightly, I’ll get out the giant pooper-scooper — aka the delete button — or turn on moderation again.

Mahalo for reading, and for leaving comments — especially thoughtful ones.