Front porch changes to a sidewalk cafe
I consider our blog to be
like our front porch, which means it feels rude not to respond to
comments folks leave on our posts. After all, if you slogged
through the mud to get here, the least I can do is to tell you how much
I appreciate your feedback.
Unfortunately, I'm
afraid I'm going to have to change my worldview slightly. While I
love the new ideas bouncing around as a result of our increased
traffic, lately I've been spending more time answering comments than
writing my daily post. I'm afraid it's starting to feel more like
a mob of strangers shouting questions while trampling my asparagus than
like a neighbor dropping by.
So I'm going to preserve
my sanity by metaphorically moving the comments section to a sidewalk
cafe just across a white picket fence from my front porch. I'll
enjoy listening to the community discussions drifting in my open
window, but probably will only drop by occasionally to put in my two
cents' worth.
That means I probably won't
be responding to intriguing ideas folks toss out, although they will
definitely be percolating through my mind and perhaps coming forth in
the garden and in later blog posts. Questions that are easily
answered by typing your keywords in the search box on the sidebar will
also get skipped, which will hopefully leave me time to respond to
questions that aren't answered in previous posts.
I hope my new policy of
answering fewer comments won't keep you from sharing your views, and I
apologize in advance if you feel slighted by my lack of response.
It's not that we're getting too big for our britches; it's that the
Walden Effect is out-growing our farm and turning into a community all
its own. Hopefully the new feature in which later comments get
emailed to previous commenters will allow you all to churn up a
vigorous discussion even if I'm hiding behind my metaphorical white
picket fence.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
I'm ok with that. This blog is just going to keep on growing.
P.S. This means Mark will have more posts right?
Change is good. After the flood of comments to your trailer post, I thought that it would be really cool if you had a discussion board. You get a lot more comments on your blog than I do, and it definitely has started to feel more like a place to come and discuss things. Maybe sometime in the future you can create a board with some of your most popular topics, so people can linger on old topics and discuss at their leisure. If your more active, trusted participants can serve as moderators, you won't have to do all the refereeing. Just a thought.
I've always been amazed to see you keep up so well, so I'm not at all surprised that you need to back off a bit.
I am always surprised to get responses to my comments, although they ARE nice and appreciated.
Maybe the surprise is from my own day job where the authors only respond in the forums where we can keep the trolling down and the topic on topic.
That said, I love the ability to get future comments emailed to me, but am a bit ... erm, un-nerved... disconcerted... with the fact that I get to see everyone's IP address along with their comment. That is something I think of as private, as private as an email address if not more so. Don't know if you can remove that before sending out the replies. That would be awfully nice.
I appreciate everybody's thoughtful replies. You're all right --- like Ikwig, I tend to lurk instead of post in places where I don't get a reply, but like Marco, I understand that the blog is on a growing trend that's going to make it harder and harder to keep up with the comments. Hopefully we can all find a middle ground!
C, I hadn't even noticed the IP address being emailed to everyone. I'll point it out to my brother and see if I can get it fixed. Thanks!
oooh one more thing. or two or three
In the past few months I've watched a number of favorite bloggers/writers cut their posting schedule down to one a week or two a week and I've left comments with them that I'd prefer to read one or two really good, thought provoking posts a week than to be buried with garbage. That's not to say that your writing is bad or theirs was bad, it's not, it's very high quality, thought provoking and thorough in a manner I've not seen in a long time (think college text books...)
It's just...
I only have so much time in my week and want to read a variety of blogs and really try to keep only the ones who make me think, who offer me something new, or who offer a community that I can learn from.
My day job is managing a news site and we have had our problems with comments etc. The best method we've found is to have forums where the community can discuss and then the authors respond to their articles in the specific section of the forums set aside for that topic and that topic only. Then the moderators can reduce the trolls (we're in that subject matter area that brings out trolls - paid for and otherwise - like nobody's business).
So you only have so much time in your week. We'll take whatever we can get from you. Taking time for your life is good and probably well thought of by most all readers!!