There’s always something to howl about.

Project Bloodhound: Great debaters: Making the most of comments with conversations, and controversy

My family’s heritage is German/Austrian on one side and Irish on the other, and I like to romantize that mix by thinking it’s a perfect blend that makes us both strong and passionate. Some of my favorite memories are of family get togethers over dinner. We talk through the dinner, we clear the dishes and spend an hour or more talking, sharing, discussing, arguing, laughing, loving, enjoying each other for the different views and voices we bring to the table. Everyone is welcomed and encouraged to take up a position and defend it strongly; the devil’s advocate is a frequent guest- fence sitters garner no respect. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? Yes, in that respect Bloodhound Blog is like family to me.

I wrote a snarky little post on ActiveRain about point whoring- leaving insipid comments for the points. I wrote a more thoughtful companion post as well, but the snarky post got some link love from Maureen McCabe and her post sparked more discussion (both Maureen’s post and the snarky post are member’s only). The nature of AR is that members get points for leaving comments on other posts. Okay. Fine. Whatever. While this encourages comments, it doesn’t encourage actually reading a post, and does nothing to encourage thoughtful comments.

I love comments, but I don’t love all comments. I love the give-and-take of conversation that is created in a good comment thread. I love discourse and discussion and yes, even disagreements. I’m not fond of the “Great post, thanks for sharing” comments that are so ubiquitous on ActiveRain, and I’ve since created an abbreviation, GPTFS, that I think point whores and lazy commenters should use. If you use GPTFS, then I’ll know that you are commenting for points or because you want to leave a link, but not because you really give a damn about my post.

Apparently I’m in the minority about this on ActiveRain and the question came up “Would you rather have no comments…?” and my answer is yes. Yes I would rather you didn’t use my time, my blog, my thoughtfulness, as a place to deposit your big signature, your spam, your point whoring… But forget that. What goes on in AR should stay in AR. What I’d like you to consider is that if you are not leaving thoughtful comments, you are missing a real opportunity to share your unique view with your corner of the world.

Jeff Brown talked about this at Bloodhound Unchained: A thoughtful comment is an art and one you should practice; it can show the world who you are, what you think, what you have to offer. If all you have to offer is GPTFS and your signature “HomesInSoCal” (if that’s your signature, nothing personal, top-of-the-head created) then what you are really sharing with the rest of us is that you have nothing of value to share with the rest of us, and that’s too bad for you, because what many bloggers don’t get is that a thoughtful comment is an opportunity to participate in some of the finest social networking there is. You don’t need to twitter, ning, plurk, or plaxo, and you don’t even need a blog- you can leave a link to a website with your real name. By reading your local blogs and leaving intelligent comments on a regular basis, you let your market see you for who you are. Links on your blog are lovely, links are fine, but every blogger wants to know that someone not only read what they wrote, but that their writing prompted a real thought.

If AR is a world of GPTFS, then BHB is a bare knuckles world of blogging, but the middle ground is where your local blogs will fall, and in that they are perfect place to engage in the same type of healthy disagreement, or an expanded agreement, that I enjoy at my big family table- a loving but passionate debate- the result being that we have learned more about each other through a lively conversation than if we had all agreed from the beginning.