Monday, March 08, 2010

Blog on Hiatus

This blog will be silent for a while. I hope to be back soon and I look forward to catching up with you then on your blogs and in comment boxes. In the meantime, feel free to cursor your way through the archives.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Blog Admin - Comment Replies

A quick note about replies to comments.

I love reading comments, especially the thoughtful ones that keep a conversation going. And the way to keep a conversation going (as long as it will organically go) is to reply to them. When I first started blogging in India, it was apparent that the convention was to reply to the comments on your blog and on your post, i.e., if someone commented on one of my posts, I would leave a new comment on the same post in reply.

Then when started reading a lot of American, British and Australian blogs, it was equally apparent that replies to my comments came in other ways. I found them landing in my inbox. Bloggers would read my comments on their posts and instead of leaving a reply via another comment on their post, they would write to my e-mail address and keep the conversation going that way.

When I was able to identify which blogger did what, I tried to do both - leave replies on my post and send e-mails in reply to those bloggers that did the same for comments on their blogs. Pretty soon, though, it all became hairy and I was doing both regularly or neither. Mostly neither.

Hence this note, particularly for those bloggers who reply to comments via e-mail. I love receiving your replies by e-mail (it spares me having to check your comments box for replies), but it seems to me that replying to comments on my post is what will work best for this blog. I like it, and it also has the virtue of having questions (that other readers might have as well) and answers in one place. If you are used to receiving replies via e-mail there's a handy-dandy blogger feature that allows you to receive comments on a particular post via e-mail. You just have to click a button and never have to come back to the same post for follow-up comments. I hope you will use it.

No matter what, thank you all for reading and taking the time to comment.