Thing #4. Why Comment? Why not?
I think the idea of commenting on someone's blog is tied to the idea of visiting the blog in the first place. You wouldn't visit someone's home and then not talk to them. If you visit the blog, you feel obliged to comment - either to agree or disagree - or say something totally irrelevant. It's common courtesy. Once the conversation is started, then the sense of community begins. If you have a common interest, the community will thrive; if not, it will die off.

The commenting sites that I visited only really reinforced this idea about posting blogs. If you are at all skilled as a conversationalist, the points made by the bloggers were only common sense. To keep a conversation going, you make pertinent comments, ask for responses. Or you make a statement in such a way that the other person is invited to respond. It is exactly the way a conversation develops. A conversation doesn't consist of two people making declarative statements at each other; it is a give and take of ideas, or a sharing of ideas, or a comparing of ideas. A blog has to be the same way.

We are supposed to list the names of the people whose blogs we visited. I have looked at a number, and will continue doing so, but I can't tell you which ones. The comments appear on my email - and that's nice to have the backup - but its on my blog that I look for responses. I have gotten a response - and replied - from Hannah, but the others - I don't know. There is probably some way I can tell where I have visited, but I don't know how. I chose the blogs to visit because they are people in my class. I think we at should have at least a common interest in keeping this blog exercise active and sharing responses to the process. I have also visited a few blogs outside of the academic realm. I am a woodworker, and there are a host of woodworking blogs out there. A number of them are professional blogs, related to woodworking magazines and specific technical aspects of woodworking (i.e. woodturning). I have visited several, only to say hello since I don't currently have any projects under way. I have gotten very nice, friendly responses from, in one case what I am sure is a automatic response machine, but also from the people who maintain the blogs. I did find one personal blog, from a guy in Ohio who does craft boxes full time. I don't know how he can make a living at it, but he has a very friendly, chatty blog that, I suppose is at least partly to market his boxes.

The question about why I made the comments I did puzzles me. I made the comments because Thing #4 required me to. At least to start, that is the only reason. Further exploration of the blog phenomenon will depend of what I find that is interesting.