Some comments on comments

Mark 5 Comments

There have been nearly 68,000 comments made on this blog since it sprang into life in spring 2011. Over 9,000 of them have been by me – replying to your comments.

The rest have been made by several hundred folk – it would be a very time consumting exercise to work out quite how many but if lockdown continues for months then, you never know…

The top commenters, in terms of quantity at least, are:

Jonathan Wallace, 1693

Dennis Ames, 1568

Pual Irving, 1497

Roderick Leslie, 1094

I may have missed someone with over 1,000 comments but I don’t think that I have (but, sorry! if it’s you).

The WordPress software tells me how many comments someone has made using their email address as the identifier (so some may have more comments if they sometmes use one email and others times another).

It is striking, and I have mentioned this before, that most comments come from men (even though the readership of this blog, according to polls in the past) is not as strongly skewed to the Y-chromosome as are the comments.

I appreciate 95% of comments here, and all comments are welcome provided they are not libellous, not gratuitously nasty, not personal, are relevant to the post on which they are submitted.

Hardly any submitted comments have ever been refused publication – I’m guessing about 25 – and that is a testament to the good behaviour of you all. Let’s keep it like that please – I feel I’ve let a small number slip through in the last six months and I’ll try not to do so again.

This blog has a community feel to it – although slightly dominated by sometimes-grumpy old-ish men (I wonder why?) – and I thank you all for keeping it a pleasant place for the exchange of views.

I do scrutinise comments from new commenters quite carefully. I’m always amused when someone announces themselves with a first nasty comment – would you really do that when you entered a social gathering for the first time?

But all views are welcome, if relevant and polite.

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5 Replies to “Some comments on comments”

  1. As an occasional commenter I’m sure I often come over as being quite negative because if I agree with what you say – and that’s most of the time – I just click the like button. Only if I disagree and feel quite strongly about the issue do I usually bother to post a comment.

    Anyway, keep up the good work, Mark. You keep us all entertained and you cover a lot of very important stuff. In the years ahead, as we deal with the consequences of Brexit, and now the virus, I think there will be huge pressure to use the need for economic growth to justify trashing our wild places and relaxing regulation etc. The need for independent minds to tell it like it is will never have been greater.

    1. Indeed Bob, I think that commenting on here helps to draw us together as a community, even when we disagree with each other. I sometimes wonder if those we criticise in agencies, government and the like read at least what Mark has written or as it sometimes appears they just listen to their sycophants, sorry advisors.
      One thing I have noticed is that we now seem to get fewer comments from those of really different views, from say the pro shooting groups but then we have given them a hard time here.

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