In Search of Comments. Or: Kairos, Purpose, and Interactivity
One thing that interests me in reader the blogs of people in-and-around composition and rhetoric is the immediate access to ideas-in-the-now. I can’t make it to every conference, and reading for prelims requires a reading of past bothers me in that with all this reading I don’t really know the context of the creation of these texts, but I’m reading for use-value in the present, so interaction with these now-ideas energizes me – when I have time to read blogs (And I need to make more time it. Is there a machine that makes time?)
What seems to work on the blogs I like to read is what appears to be a pure intentionality that draws others to comment on their blogs. Sure, the blogs can be crafted to engage participation, but that’s the intention and something those new to blogging can think about – yeah, I’m talking to my students.
If your blog isn’t getting comments, it may not be getting read by others yet; that can happen when you’re a new blogger. But you also got to look at the blogs you’re writing.
Is there space for engagement, interactivity?
I accept your challenge:
I think you’re right to suggest that certain posts and certain bloggers do a better job initiating interaction. Though I’m far from a blogging veteran, I can usually tell which of my posts are going to have some legs and which aren’t (mostly the reading notes and especially the Deleuze reading notes). But the fact that I receive comments–and often in quick succession–for my more engaging posts tells me there are people out there reading those less engaging posts and (like I often do) filing them away as they move on to other, perhaps more relevant, sites.
Comment by Scot — October 9, 2006 @ 10:25 pm
Of course, it all depends on whether or not you care about receiving responses. I’m somewhat ambivalent, but then I’m somewhat ambivalent about everything I do. Probably should work on that.
Funny, though - I’ve been thinking about the public nature of this writing, and how much I do or don’t want it to be interactive. Yes, I’m weird. I’ve never pretended not to be. But I just posted a representation of my confusedion regarding writing publicly about work-in-progress. I never stop trying to figure it all out.
Comment by k8 — October 10, 2006 @ 2:21 am
I agree with both of you, and it’s something new bloggers (in this case, my students [and I]) should consider. People are sometimtes reading the posts that don’t receive comments (I read Scot’s “Notes: Difference and Repetition” but didn’t comment, for example)–so we need to consider the purpose of a post and what response we are seeking. Wolfgang Iser would say that it’s the “very lack of . . . defined intention” on the part of the author that creates “gaps” in the text that “brings about the text-reader interaction,” so this seems to be a different kind of interaction (one taking place in the imagination of the reader; really, a result of the constraints of traditionnal printed text: face-to-face interaction is impossible) compared to, say, a blogger composing a post with gaps, or perhaps “guiding devices,” created to prompt readers to interact with/respond to the original post.
Comment by Rick — October 10, 2006 @ 12:37 pm
hello i am from vermont, may i add you as i friend?
Comment by пицца в офис — November 28, 2008 @ 3:12 pm