Matthew Warner on Blog Comments: Part 3 of 2

This is 'part 3 of 2' in a series of posts by Matthew Warner, about folks who comment on blogs, and how to respond to them.

This 'part 3' is - I'll let Mr. Warner introduce it, himself:

"16 Ways to be a better and holier blog commenter"
Matthew Warner blog, The National Catholic Register (June 9, 2010)

"After profiling the different types of blog commenters recently, I had some requests for advice on how to be the good kinds of commenters, rather than the bad. Here are some dos and don'ts that might help:

"1) Be charitable. If you are not making a comment out of love, you have no reason to make it.

"2) Do not comment when you're angry. You'll probably regret it and won't be able to undo it. Anything good to say will still be good in a few hours when the anger has worn off a bit.

"3) If you quote part of the article or another comment, make it a short quote. ..."

And so on, through 16 points. The last two are "Be Christ" and "Comment." Pretty good advice, I think. Nothing astonishing or terribly new - pretty much the same common-sense 'say something sensible, then sit down' advice that's been around for - how long?

Information technology has changed some of the processes we use to communicate with each other: but whether it's folks gathered around a fire in the evening, or twiddling their fingers over keyboards - there's still a human being at each end of the communications channel, and we haven't changed all that much.

Oh, Great: Now I have to Think

Matthew Warner's post is about comments we leave on other people's blogs - but the principles could be applied to the posts we right, too. Points I want to remember include 'be charitable and 'stay focused.' And, no small achievement for me: be brief.

Related posts, in another blog:

• "Blog Comments Categorized: Encouragers to Aliens II - The Response"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (June 4, 2010)
• "Blog Comments Categorized: Encouragers to Aliens"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (May 28, 2010)