Wounded Bird receives fewer comments now than ever before in the six years of its existence. I'm not complaining, simply stating a fact. Except for the most popular blogs, those with thousands of readers, commentary has moved from blogging to other social networks, such as Facebook, etc. When I disallowed anonymous comments earlier, due to the overwhelming numbers of spam comments coming through, mostly in the name of "anonymous", some regulars here were unable to comment because they were not registered with Blogger, Google, or one of the other blogging formats. Now, perhaps too late, I invite those readers back to the comments, because with comment moderation enabled, anonymous comments are permitted. I ask those who comment as "anonymous" to sign a name, any name, make up a name, when you leave a comment, so we can distinguish one anonymous from another.
My wish has always been to keep the comment function open and free, and, for many years it was possible, but no longer. Wounded Bird must change with the times. Thank you for your cooperation.
I always enjoy your posts, Chere Grandmere. We've all gone our separate ways in the past few years and, as you rightly point out, the nature of social media and sharing ideas has evolved beyond the blogosphere to a large degree. I am thankful that you keep your blog running.
ReplyDeleteJames
Thank you, James. I keep Wounded Bird running for those who still read and to keep a permanent record, since posts on Facebook seem ephemeral, as they disappear from sight rather quickly as newer posts come in. Also, for long, original posts, Blogger seems more useful to me.
DeleteI always enjoy your posts too! And although I rarely comment on them, I have learned a lot about Louisiana politics from you.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about FaceBook. It is my understanding that you have to be someone's "friend" to read their stuff. If that is true, then when people are sharing ideas, they are most likely only sharing with like-minded people. To me that doesn't lend to much discussion or debate.
That is why I feel blogs are much better if you actually want to get some feedback, or have an honest discussion, on your ideas or positions. It is open to anyone to comment. And hopefully, even with moderation, anyone can express an opinion (if done civilly) Although I do know some bloggers who don't publish anyone who disagrees with them.
So kudos to you. I do hope you keep it up.
8th day, I am not overly fond of Facebook, but most of my friends are there, so I am there, too, for how long I don't know. Who can read depends on the settings. I have mine set to "Friends and Friends of friends", which seems to leave room for disagreement.
DeleteI don't particularly like the format on Facebook, as it far too busy with ads, nor do I like being at the constant mercy of Mark Zuckerberg and his team and their constant changes to Facebook. The many changes may annoy me enough that I will drop out one day. My heart is in blogging, and I will certainly continue for now.
I also find that Facebook is a great consumer of my time that could be better spent, but that is entirely my own doing. Though I'm there, I would not recommend Facebook.
8th Day, I guess that depends on whether you're only Facebook friends with those who share your point of view! I'm certainly not!
DeleteDuring Lent this year, I gave up blogging and reading blogs, but started posting 'Random Lent Thoughts' on Facebook. I got ten times as many comments as I normally do on my blog. I conclude that the world has indeed largely moved on from blogging, which, as Mimi says, I regret. But then, I regret that the world has largely moved on from neighbourhood bookstores in favour of Amazon as well - even though the fault is partly mine!
Quite true, Tim. You and I have had our share of disagreements, and if either of us insisted our friends agree with us, then we would not be friends. :-)
DeleteI will continue to regret the loss of local bookstores and the loss of interest in blogs, but life goes on. Facebook is now where the action is for me too, though I will keep the blog going. A blog post is a permanent record that is easy to find, whereas I have no idea where Facebook posts go or how to go about searching for old posts.
Why do I have the feeling that if I were to post anonymously, you would know who I am anyway?
ReplyDeleteBecause of my amazing psychic powers, Paul (A.), and of course, you are one of a kind in so many ways.
DeleteMy husband worked at a polling site from 5:30am to 11pm on primary election day, so we didn't try to go to the celebrtion of winner of the borough president's race even though he'd canvassed for her. Just as well -- a friend went by (it was held at a pub called The Flying Pig), found it was too crowded wit insiders, and went home.
ReplyDeleteI feel that way about Facebook -- t o o o much. Wounded Bird is peaceful and uncluttered. I look at every change posted.
Grandmère, did you see Paul Krugman today? He leads with a shot at your beloved governor:
Early this year, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, made headlines by telling his fellow Republicans that they needed to stop being the “stupid party.” Unfortunately, Mr. Jindal failed to offer any constructive suggestions about how they might do that. And, in the months that followed, he himself proceeded to say and do a number of things that were, shall we say, not especially smart.'The latest news is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has abandoned his efforts to craft a face-saving climbdown on the budget, which means that we’re all set for shutdown, possibly followed by debt crisis.' Nonetheless, Republicans did follow his advice. In recent months, the G.O.P. seems to have transitioned from being the stupid party to being the crazy party.
Unregulated militias, unregulated financial institutions, entitled billionares of inherited wealth, corrupted politicians . . . Lovely weather we're having, though . . .
Murdoch, I read Krugman's blog posts every day, but I have exceeded my limit of free reads at the NYT for the month. I've posted many times of the stupidity of Jindal's policies here in Louisiana. He is still busy destroying many worthy institutions and programs which will take decades to rebuild, if the will is ever there.
DeleteI know what you mean, Grandmere. I have been getting tons of spam but few legitimate comments. Do you really think fewer people are reading our blogs? They are losing out I say.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I still much prefer blogs.
DeleteIf I judge by the count on Sitemeter and Statcounter, then the numbers of visitors are far less, but if I go by Blogger stats, they are higher. I don't know which count is accurate. I know Sitemeter and Statcounter do not count all mobile devices, because visits to my blog from my phone and my husband's phone are not counted. Blogger counts at least some of the mobile devices.
ANOTHER blog going to moderation? :-(
ReplyDelete[Hey, if you're going to bring things back, I *STILL* miss pop-up comment threads!]
JCF, sorry but it seemed the way to go. I don't know what you mean by pop-up comment threads.
DeleteWe went through all this a couple of years ago, Mimi. You and MP both switched to comment thread that were NOT pop-up (half page-width size) threads [See re Friends-of-Jake, and Counterlight's Peculiars, for blogs that still have pop-up threads]
DeleteI don't switch because I don't care much for the way pop-ups work on other blogs. When I preview, the words come out in one long line that bleeds out of the box and even off the page if it's long enough, which makes the preview function worthless for my use.
DeleteI understand the point that we often don’t agree with our friends but I would bet that it is still a rather similar pool of people in your Facebook friends list.
ReplyDeleteMost people I know have FaceBook accounts but haven’t used them in years, except for the occasional sharing of family photos, which I think is the one thing Facebook does well. When I look at most FB pages it seems to me to be a lot of re-posting from other sites. Click around Facebook and you see the same thing being regurgitated over and over. In fact, I just clicked on 6 accounts and saw a link to a Louis C.K. video about kids having smart phones listed on 5 of them. So I watched the video which was all about spending time on our devices because we are all so lonely. Ironic.
And quite frankly, it scares me to see how much time people spend in front of their computers liking cute dog pictures and inspirational sayings re-posted a thousand times over from Pinterest.
Blogs at least seem to have more original content.
Further, blogs are searchable. So if I am looking for a variety of perspectives about a subject, I can do a search of blogs and get a very interesting array of stories and opinions - things I would have never found otherwise. I would much rather get info about what’s happening in Syria from a blogger living in the MIddle East than from yet another pedantic American reposting something on FB they just read on Huffington Post.
So I guess I am still hoping against hope that blogging survives and that we are not all lulled into FaceBook (a for profit, billion dollar company) ruling our social and intellectual lives. To say nothing of how much of your personal information is available thru them, which is very scary.
So Mimi, I hope you continue to blog. I would have never found you otherwise. I wouldn’t have eaten at the Court of Two Sisters where I met a waitress who was about to attend college near me and I was able to help find her a place to live; or start digging into the economic impact of tolls on our bridges; or listened to Fats Domino - if it weren’t for you blog. You just never really know how wide an influence you have.
8thday, everything you say about Facebook is true. You've enumerated the reasons for my dislike of the site. A friend lost an original essay on Facebook. It simply disappeared, and he had not saved it anywhere else. There is no way either of us knows of for him to search for it.
DeleteMany of my FB friends are former readers of my blog, and we're fairly frequently, but not entirely, a mutual admiration society. Still, my blog has never been a hotbed of controversy.
On the plus side, I've made friends that I would never have met but for Facebook. Recently, two Facebook friends died suddenly within about two weeks, and I grieved for them. We had established true relationships, and I still miss them. When I go to England next month, I will meet at least two Facebook friends face to face. So there is that.
Anything I think worthwhile saving, I post on my blog, and then sometimes on FB, too. I'm not going to abandon blogging.
A last thought on FaceBook/blogging - I wish that when someone posted a story to both places, that commenters could see both also. I had participated in a very lively dialogue on a blog only to find out later that other commenters were engaged in an equally lively dialogue that had taken a whole different path on FaceBook. It would have been so much more interesting if both groups had been able to talk to each other.
ReplyDelete8thday, I post stories on both formats, often with links to my blog, and even those who click over to the blog to read the entire post choose to comment on Facebook, so I sometimes have two conversations going at the same time, which can be crazy-making
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