A blog without comments looks like it isn’t read or doesn’t interest the world. Over the last decade this blog has received just under 76,000 comments on its over 8,000 blog posts – in round numbers that’s around 20 comments a day and getting on for 10 comments per post.
I’ve read every single one of them as I chose that this blog’s comments would be moderated ie each comment had to be approved by me. That’s so that abusive or slanderous comments can be rejected or edited. I’ve acted as a gatekeeper for comments, so I really have read all of those 76,000 comments. And there have only been a very small number, somewhere between two and four handfuls in all that time, that I have simply rejected on the grounds of taste. Rather more, but still a very small proportion, a few score perhaps, have been edited and I’ve made it clear that they have been edited by me and why. No comment has been rejected on the grounds that I don’t agree with it – there are plenty of published comments on this blog with which I haven’t agreed but they’ve all been published.
It feels to me that this blog has generated its own community of commenters and they have been an incredibly important part of the success of this blog. Your comments have encouraged and corrected me over the years, and they have also been a major source of interest to others. I am grateful to everyone (I can’t tell you how many in all, and I’m certainly not going back through 76,000 comments to find out!) who has ever commented here. And particularly to those regular commenters, some of whom have stayed with this blog through the last decade. Thank you.
It’s a bit of a shame that the comments on this blog mostly come from grumpy old men, but not terribly surprising since this blog is written by a grumpy ageing man and all readers’ surveys I’ve carried out show that the readers of this blog, whilst diverse overall, might be characterised as left-leaning men aged over 55 who voted Remain, oppose driven grouse shooting, support rewilding and think climate change is a pretty big issue. I’m particularly grateful to those commenters here who fall outside of those categories for their comments.
Some people have landed up on this blog looking for an argument – they’ve usually been aggressively pro-shooting. I responded robustly to many of them (takes time) but the response from the community of readers of this blog has been a strongly moderating force here too.
Moderating your comments has taken, on average, over half an hour a day (every day for a decade). Comments can arrive at all times of the day or night and if people are going to comment then they want to see their pearls of wisdom shining on the blog as soon as possible. And if comments are going to turn into conversations they must appear fairly quickly. This means that I have spent a decade having a quick look to see whether any comments have arrived, and then reading them and approving them, and sometimes replying. I have processed your comments at airports, pubs, restaurants, racecourses, hotels and in toilets and on trains, and, I reckon, in over a dozen countries. Without a mobile phone and network connnection (trains – grrr!) this would have been impossible. It’s a lot easier to moderate comments while sitting at a PC but who wants to sit at a PC all day?
It would be a slippery slope for me to thank any particular commenters by name because there are so many of you but I do thank you all.
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I can only speak for myself but I, for one, am grateful to have had the opportunity to post my ‘gumpy old man’ (I won’t say pearls of wisdom!) comments here, so thank you for providing the soap box!
I guess the vast majority of commenters are in broad agreement with your original posts but I think it is to your credit (and RPUK does likewise) that you have the confidence in your arguments to also give your opponents a voice on your platform (and even a guest blog from time to time). Sadly those opponents don’t seem to have the same level of confidence in their own position. I have on several occasions tried to post polite but dissenting views on the GWCT blog only for them to disappear into the ether whilst comments supporting the GWCT ‘position’ posted at the same time pop up one after the other.
Jonathan – you can only speak for yourself except that over the years I think you are the person whose comments have most often made me think ‘I wish I’d put it like that’. Thank you for your 1958 (year of my birth) comments here so far.
Strange Jonathan that’s my experience too of the GWCT blog, initially I wondered whether it only happened to non members but I now know that argument falls as a member I know tried to post a dissenting voice to a post only for it to never appear. A blog should surely be confident enough in its posts to allow those who dissent to generate debate, which generates more comments of course. Blogs that fail to do that in a sense are just propaganda. I’ve learnt lots on here from other commentators and enjoyed the sense of community that Mark mentions, whilst I will admit to not always being polite with some definite Grumpy old man syndrome comments.
As an ex- member, regularly receiving requests to return, this has been my experience a couple of times recently.
I dont bother now.
Lets see if I can get this banned on grounds of taste.
I enjoy pineapple and anchovies on pizza, on the same pizza even.
Now there is an incendiary opinion.
Sincerely, a grumpy not quite old yet, woman.
My recipe calls for the pineapple, and then the pizza, to be discarded
Keston fish ponds were devoid of fish a decade after you were there.
That’s sad – not that I ever managed to extract any while they were still there. A friend caught a sizeable tench on the first dawn of the season c1963 – the only fish I ever saw out of the water.
This: https://www.londonslostrivers.com/river-ravensbourne.html is a fascinating portal. Diamond Geezer blogspot too – a blog a day since 2002.
Random22 – provocative, indeed. Thanks for most of your comments here.
I like both but not together and not on Pizza!
That’s a bit of positive news – at 54 I’m one of this blog’s young(er) bucks….sort of. I’ve always been acutely conscious that you’re the one person who has, and has to, read every single comments posted by others including yours truly. I know I go on a bit about certain things which is a positive reflection on this blog, because I feel that I can and need to and there isn’t that much scope to do it elsewhere. However, I’ve never done so without thinking poor Mark is going to have to read this while everyone else can just skip over it and maybe, just maybe he might not be terribly excited at reading about my thoughts on invasive plants used as game cover/getting beavers into the uplands/food waste and conservation/anglers turning a blind eye to the EMBER report/dearth of deadwood and its active conservation etc, etc for the quadzillionth time. Therefore it’s time for me to say thanks for all your efforts with my comments and sorry for the times you MUST have been fed up with them!
Re fellow commentators, what a fantastic bunch! The amount of experience and insight many of them have is quite intimidating, but inspiring too – I’ve learnt one hell of a lot. I’m dead chuffed that I’m now face book friends with several of them, and have even had a pint or two with young Cranston…people don’t come any more agreeable than he does. Sadly I had just stopped working on the recycling scheme at the Hay Festival when I came across this blog, if I’d still been doing it I would have put a note here every year that I’d be delighted if anyone going to it came and said hello to put a face to the name. What a bloody great crew. My only regret is that I didn’t find this blog at its very beginning.
Les – your 816 comments here have all brought pure delight!
Mark – thank you SO much for everything you’ve posted. You and your commentators and absolutely superb photographers plus your cartoonists have taught me so much and brought tremendous pleasure to me – particularly I’ve really his last year.
I am going to miss your regular blogs hugely but it’ll be really interesting and exciting to find out what projects you’ll be supporting in the future. Whatever they are, I wish you well and the best of luck.
I’m quite anti-over-population pheasant. I now have red-legged partridge also turning up, stealing the sheep feed just like the pheasants. Worse than the crows, who only crime so far has been to use the sheep’s drinking water to soak the bread they pick up from somewhere else. And the pheasants outnumber the crows.
Googling to find my nearest commercial shoot shows that it is several km away, so that proposed 500m perimeter around protected sites looks a bit rubbish IMO. N.B. I am being overly polite and using an understatement, if it wasn’t obvious.
So – good luck over at Wild Justice.
Personally speaking, the strength of this blog is its willingness to publish all reasonably written posts, and not to
string contributors along for entertainment value, only to shut them off when the argument turns.
Mark,
You started on your journey with this Blog, at exactly the same time, almost to the day, that I started as a freelance (& now Director of my own company) ecologist. It became a routine to read your blogs, and I particularly enjoyed ‘travelling with you’ round America. So thanks for all the unseen efforts you’ve put in to the Blog. And allowing all (most) to comment.
Best wishes for your next ventures
Richard
I am still staring into the bleak midsummer when this blog is dormant with a sense of loss. This blog has no comparable that I am aware of and one of its enduring advantages is that it permits immediate comment and discussion on the issues of the moment, without waiting months for the editorial and publication processes of journals and other platforms. Mark, you’ve earned your break from it (and some), but I harbour a selfish hope that, like a parent whose exudes a sigh of relief when their offspring leave home, you’ll be missing it before long.
As an honorary grumpy old man (fitting all categories except the man bit) – thank you for the years of information this blog has given me, and the opportunity to have a voice and to ‘do’ something. It has brought together people who otherwise would not have known each other, who don’t work for NGOs or in the conservation community, but nevertheless feel a deep connection to nature and can, with their own eyes, see the collapse of wildlife populations and ecosystems around them. It has brought me to ‘Fighting for Birds’, ‘A Message from Martha’ and ‘Inglorious’, to Hen Harrier Days, Westminster and the streets of London. Your book reviews have led me to be enlightened, enthused and enraged by, among others, ‘Who Owns England’, ‘Wilding’, and ‘The Book of Trespass’. And my cash, such as it is, has made its way to Wild Justice campaigns, World Land Trust and more. We the many can, through education and action, make a difference by supporting those who speak truth to, and challenge, power with their knowledge. So thank you, Mark, for this blog – I shall now keep an eye on Wild Justice and look out for your next books. Very best wishes!
Jane – well, thank you. that is exactly the response that this old blogger wanted and if there are a few others who feel the same as you do then that makes me feel quite happy.
Hi Mark sorry to hear you are planning to wind down to whatever degree. Thank you for all your blogs and books most of which I’ve read. I particularly enjoyed your blogs about your road trip across the eastern US to research a Message from Martha and your book of that title was a great read. More of the same in the future would be great if you have any plans to travel. Indeed if any of us are able to travel!
You have been a great advocate for nature as you set out to be and I hope there is much more to come in the future.
Phil – many thanks.