Something has bothered me for a while. When someone says that a certain group of people “thinks” this or “says” that, where does the opinion of that group come from?
If it’s true that only 1% of people are “vocal” on the internet, (via posts, tweets, comments or blogs) does that really tell us what the quiet people are thinking? (I’m not claiming to be one of the quiet ones.)
By Life of Riley – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Even if a person on the internet seems to be in line with my own thoughts on a subject, I rarely agree with the way they’ve stated it much less every nuance of their opinion. Often, there is no nuance, the stand is so extreme it forces polarized positions and the statements are surface level, oversimplified, sarcastic or trite.
The world is bigger than this 1%.
The issues are complex and I have a feeling a good chunk of the other 99% think much deeper than can be expressed in a tweet. So, they don’t tweet, they talk. and listen.
In person.
Where there are no trolls and the only seagulls are at the beach.
I don’t say “the left” does or says this or “the right” does or says that. Reformed, Arminian, Atheist, Evangelicals, straight, LGBT, Clinton/Trump “supporters”….whatever group label you can think of, remember the 1% rule.
“The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the Internet represents approximately 1% (give or take) of the people actually viewing that content. For example, for every person who posts on a forum, generally about 99 other people are viewing that forum but not posting.” [CLICK HERE to read the full wikimedia content on the 1% rule]
Given our propensity to get our information from the internet, it’s statistically probable that whatever opinion you hold about a certain labeled group and whatever reasoning behind that opinion is based on what 1% of the internet population thinks – and the internet population is only 40% of the world population.
The world is bigger than this 1%. We only think they represent the majority because they are the loudest and most visible.
The quiet people are thinking. And apparently, there’s more of them than we realize. I’m betting one of the reasons they are quiet is that they have no time or patience for the tic-tac-toe futility of the bickering that seems so prevalent on the internet today.
Thank God. Because there’s a LOT of intolerant and judgemental people on the internet who could use a day or two off the grid to regain some perspective.
#seepeople and #edify, because everybody is #justadifferentkindofbroken
I frequently respond to a commentor within their comment. In WordPress, it’s super easy. There are other ways, but my favorite is the laziest way:
I view the comments on a post while logged into WordPress. In many templates, the word “edit” will appear next to each comment, along with the commentor’s name and the date of the comment. (click on the image below to see it more clearly)
I just click edit.
How do you edit comments on Blogger? It doesn’t look like you can. After a search, I found a Q&A that read like this:
Question: “Someone left a comment on my blog and they made a spelling mistake. I could care less. But they do I guess and want me to edit their comment to fix their spelling mistake is there any way I can do that?
Answer: Not native Blogger comments – with Blogger, you take them or leave them.
So in Blogger, it appears you have to just make your own comment on your post if you want to reply to a comment there. That’s also what I’ve seen Shannon do on Rocks in My Dryer and she’s on Typepad.
My “best practices” for responding to a comment within a comment? I italicize and indent my response, I place it in parenthesis and I add “by JSM” to differentiate the comment from the response. Save. Done.
Ever leave a comment on a blog and REALLY want to remove it later? Maybe you have an embarrassing typo, maybe you shared just a little too much and have “commenter’s remorse” or maybe you accidentally posted a comment on the wrong blog post. I’m sure there are other reasons.
The good news? You may have some options!
If:
You have a blogger account* AND
You are logged in AND
You leave a comment on another blogger blog
Then:
Go to the blog where you left the (unwanted) comment.
Find the page where your comment appears.
Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon. Click it.
On the confirmation page, click “Delete Comment” and you’re done!
*Did you catch what I wrote? A blogger ACCOUNT. I didn’t say a blogger BLOG. At least, not an active, public one. You don’t have to switch your blog platform. You don’t even have to create a “real” blog. You can create a blogger account, create a “bare bones” blog, make it private and ba da bing. You have a blogger account. Then, when you comment, use OpenID to link to your active blog, whatever its platform – BUT make sure you are logged into blogger when you comment.
Because, if you aren’t logged in to blogger when you comment, you won’t see a trash can next to your post later. Here’s the thing. If you have a blogger account, but use OpenID to sign your comment, you won’t be able to delete your comment UNLESS you were logged into blogger when you posted the comment.
ohhhhh. (in the link above, blogger explains a few other reasons you may not see a trash can next to your comment)
I did that this morning. And then I had to email the blog owner to beg her to delete my comment for me! (no. I’m not telling who it was. you’ll go read my comment before she deletes it. I’ll give her public credit for inspiring this post AFTER she gets a chance to remove it.) UPDATE: Thanks, Amy for deleting my stupid comment.
You can also manually add a “delete” button on your blogger blog by inserting some code into your template. I found these instructions which provides the code allowing the comment author to delete it. I get the impression this would be for commenters who don’t have a blogger account. I haven’t tried it yet, but I probably will (Pragmatic Communion and Pragmatic Computing are hosted by blogger).
It is unfortunately not possible to edit or delete any comments you have left on another WordPress.com blog.
The best thing to do would be to attempt to contact the blog owner.
bummer.
Anyone know how is this handled by Typepad? What about other blogging software platforms?
Ever leave a comment on a blog and REALLY want to remove it later? Maybe you have an embarrassing typo, maybe you shared just a little too much and have “commenter’s remorse” or maybe you accidentally posted a comment on the wrong blog post. I’m sure there are other reasons.
The good news? You may have some options!
If:
You have a blogger account* AND
You are logged in AND
You leave a comment on another blogger blog
Then:
Go to the blog where you left the (unwanted) comment.
Find the page where your comment appears.
Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon. Click it.
On the confirmation page, click “Delete Comment” and you’re done!
*Did you catch what I wrote? A blogger ACCOUNT. I didn’t say a blogger BLOG. At least, not an active, public one. You don’t have to switch your blog platform. You don’t even have to create a “real” blog. You can create a blogger account, create a “bare bones” blog, make it private and ba da bing. You have a blogger account. Then, when you comment, use OpenID to link to your active blog, whatever its platform – BUT make sure you are logged into blogger when you comment.
Because, if you aren’t logged in to blogger when you comment, you won’t see a trash can next to your post later. Here’s the thing. If you have a blogger account, but use OpenID to sign your comment, you won’t be able to delete your comment UNLESS you were logged into blogger when you posted the comment.
ohhhhh. (in the link above, blogger explains a few other reasons you may not see a trash can next to your comment)
I did that this morning. And then I had to email the blog owner to beg her to delete my comment for me! (no. I’m not telling who it was. you’ll go read my comment before she deletes it. I’ll give her public credit for inspiring this post AFTER she gets a chance to remove it.) UPDATE: Thanks, Amy for deleting my stupid comment.
You can also manually add a “delete” button on your blogger blog by inserting some code into your template. I found these instructions which provides the code allowing the comment author to delete it. I get the impression this would be for commenters who don’t have a blogger account. I haven’t tried it yet, but I probably will (Pragmatic Communion and Pragmatic Computing are hosted by blogger).
