What's all this about comments?

San Diego Zoo sign

The past few days it appears a few bloggers are writing about blog comments. I think I must have missed a meeting. Was there an on-line discussion that triggered these posts? It seems to me there is a strange undercurrent about this topic. Let me give you a few examples, maybe you have read others. 

When Opinions Turn Ugly: Passive-Aggressive Blogging

From Silent to Troll in 60 Seconds

Look in the Mirror

The Other Side of Comments and Community

How Do You Sleep At Night?

Beware the Bog of Eternal Stench

This is Déjà vu.  In fact, now I remember it was last fall when I wrote a comment on one of Chris Brogan's posts.  It went like this:

Chris,
Sometimes I must really be asleep at the switch. Where does all this drama unfold? I get so busy with my clients and trying to stay up to date on strategy that I have totally missed this soap opera. I will say this: yesterday I read Julien's post about "How to Make Popular/Influential Friends" and he closed with this sentence: "This post inspired by a bunch of talk going on recently that I don’t want to give more attention to." So...I said to myself...something is going on and I am really out of the loop, but I wondered why Julien was dignifying the 'bunch of talk' by even writing the post. (Curiously no one has commented on Julien's post. [to date only one comment - 04/06/2011])
In the scheme of things...we have two wars, North Korea shooting at South Korea, people losing their homes, cholera epidemic in Haiti, people starving in our own towns...be the bigger person, as I know you are, do good work like you tell us to do.
Thank you for all you do.
Judy

Come to think about it, yesterday Chris Brogan tweeted: 

"If people spent 1/2 as much time working on good things instead of spreading rumors..."

When I read Chris' tweet it gave me a funny feeling and then in the last 24 hours came the blogs referenced above. Here is what I know.  It is hard to know what all is going on in social media. Sometimes there is an undercurrent that just lingers. It is unsettling. You aren't quite sure what started the discussion and many involved don't want to share the gory details. My guess is this will always go on, after all we're humans. We don't always communicate well when we are face to face, so for sure our words can and will be misconstrued in cyberspace. 

Last evening I was reading a fairly new blog and came across this post: An Editorial Comment. Go ahead click over and read it. Pretty interesting, don't you think? 

I know it seems a bit crazy to ask for your comments. But I really would like to know what you think. So please, comment away!

Too Busy to Write? My September 2010 Review

As usual, today Chris Brogan's post "The Discipline to Write Daily" was thought provoking and it reminded me that during the month of September 2010 I did not publish one single post here on my OP-ED page. This is not to say that I was on total radio silence for the last month, but just active writing for Webconsuls, working with our clients, commenting on others' interesting posts...

Today I thought it might be fun to point you to some of my favorite September reads. If you read these posts, you will see I left a comment, so take a few minutes and scroll through the comments, you will learn a lot about people.

• September 1, Chris Brogan wrote about "Selling Wool or Yarn" ---I have done both!
• September 8, Ridgely Johnson talked about "My Kindle, My BFF" --- I don't have a Kindle.
• September 16, I published "Rose Knows What to Do When Novelty Wears Off"  --- A lot of people enjoyed meeting Rose!
• September 17, Allison Boyer writing for Blog World chatted about "Twitter Chats: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"  --- for those who join in chats this is a great primer.
• September 22, John McLachlan asked "Why Blog?" --- Why indeed?
• September 22, Jorja White talked about "Empathy 101 and Adam Braverman" --- Jorja is busy with family and writing an e-Book, but on September 29 she did a follow-up  "Misunderstanding and Adam Braverman"
• September 22, Julien Smith wrote  "Your Happiness is Not Your Own"
• September 23, Lisa Petrilli talked about "How I am Measuring My Blog's Summer Harvest" --- I was honored to be mentioned by Lisa.
• September 29, Chris Brogan started an interesting discussion "How Not to Have Mind Numbing Office Meetings" --- to which I commented...

Chris,

I have known some employees/workers who just love meetings. You know why? You can easily fill up your whole "workday" with meetings and not open your brain or your mouth. I promised on Twitter that I would give you a couple of funny meeting anecdotes, so here you go.

I was a banker for many years. In the old days, many banks were required to have standing committee meetings for things like commercial loan applications, directors and officers, etc. One day I realized that I was going to be in three consecutive meetings with just a 30 minute lunch break. It was a cold winter day in northern New Hampshire (Littleton). The meeting room was cold and uncomfortable. So during the break I walked across Main St into a wonderful store and purchased a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown. I went back to the bank, put the nightgown on over my wool business suit, walked into the empty room and waited. The rest of the "committee" arrived and it took 20 minutes before the bank President looked at me and started to crack up with laughter. I told him I was preparing for a long cold day into night. The meeting was wrapped up quickly.

Many years later I was working as a Senior Business Analyst on a high profile project for a casualty and property insurance company. The CTO was directly in charge of this project, even though there was a "project manager." The CTO had a habit of answering many direct questions by saying: "We'll see." I must add that when we had our weekly project meeting on Friday mornings we each had name cards, so one day I created a name card with the name "Will Cee" and placed it at the chair next to mine. The meeting started and about 15 minutes into the "agenda" the CTO asked if Will was coming to the meeting, to which I responded "We'll see!"

In closing, I will be pretty busy over the next few weeks. Don't worry, I will take plenty of photos. And, don't forget I will be meeting some of you in person at Blog World Expo 2010.

In the meantime, you can enjoy my wedding photo album that covers family weddings from 1901 through 1978.

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