Great post, I agree!

In addition to the psychology of confirming a person’s currently held bias, there is also the demonstrated effect of peer pressure on one’s perception of facts.

So if you read a post and then 20 comments from people who all agree that the conclusion drawn by the author is correct, you’re statistically more likely to agree. (Creepy but true). For a reader-friendly (non-expert) explanation of this phenomenon see:

http://www.experiment-resources.com/asch-experiment.html

And, to use another potential favorite: I myself was just posting on this topic the other day 😉

Elitist!

I read blogs (such as this one) for various reasons. I comment on some of them because:

1. The posts solicit thoughts and comments from all readers, which in turn supports the subject presented.

2. Posters tend to like comparing their own operations (lifestyle) with those stated by others.

3. Everyone has something to share, irregardless of their life experiences or where they are currently positioned in reference to the issue.

4. Something can be learned of value from each blog post and it’s thread of comments.

5. One can gain a general idea of how the posters are coping with or accepting the issues that confront them.

I tend to stay away from the following blogs:

a. Those that are steeped in gloom and doom and depict people who have given up hope and are simply waiting for the “final” shoe to drop.

b. Those that are a subversive nature to our government, our ideals as Americans, or the American way of life.

c. Those that promote a narrow minded “answer” to all or most of life’s problems.

d. Those that allow profanity, name calling, and demeaning of the blog owner, or the blog’s posters. ( I could name a few, but that is really immaterial).

I rate blogs on helpfulness and suggestions of ideas of how to do something better, easier,
more cost effective, and creative. I also like blogs that can reference sources of information on various subjects, ie: websites, books, magazines, etc.

I think the term “Great Post” is typical of many blogs. To me, it means instant agreement with the subject matter presented, and it is a timely post, one that others are either thinking about, or need information on currently. A person who benefits from a specific blog, and follows it, will appear in the comments section, and sometimes quite often. I prefer blogs to read that are very helpful, and not “recreational” as some people tend to use them.

@alice – Great comment. I agree 😉

@Experimently – It has to do with the central limit theorem. I can’t really come up with a good example, but you can use it to determine when it makes sense to use statistics on a set of variables (group of people) and when you need to treat them individually. The lower 1/sqrt(N) is, the better the statistics works.

@Evan – The problem is how many people can relate. Since I am “out of touch” I have yet to figure out which posts will get a lot of comments and which won’t. In fact, usually when I write what I think is a great post, it hardly gets any comments. Maybe everything was said. Maybe nobody got it. Maybe it wasn’t that great. On the other hand, touching a controversial topic or giving a controversial angle (e.g. I don’t like traveling, so it sucks) tend to bring up lots of comments.

Dying laughing – @Evan – seriously, I have gone back to Trent’s post on Laundry Detergent about 50 times – now you got me interested – what did he have to say about Wrapping??! ROTFLMAO in Los Angeles.

I’ve also found some of the blogs I read (or used to frequent)have a certain group of the “usual” commenters. After finding one very “agreeable” commenter on one blog, I then found the same commenter on another blog taking a polarized stance from the opinion they had agreed to on the other blog! Another instance was finding someone questioning a raw foods diet, saying they knew nothing about the benefits to be had. One week later, on their own blog, they were touting the benefits of raw foods, saying they’ve been “raw” for months and were offering coaching???????

When I find “co-incidences” like this, I suspect the commenter is more eager to make themselves visible. If they are dedicated to a blog subject, or even just currently posting about a specific topic, they may visit similar sites and make comments. This way when other commenters find their like-minded sentiments expressed, they will be more apt to click on the commenter’s name to link to their blog.

Or, I’m just imagining all this, and it’s purely kismet 🙂

This comment is likely not made by a regular reader but rather by a visiting reader who stumbled onto the post by accident.

Yeah, I had some asshole put a link to a post I had written on reddit (whatever that is), and then I had thousands of people flocking to my blog to leave nasty comments.

I wonder about the phenomenon of nasty comments coming from non-regular readers. I think it’s the anonymity factor. A regular reader feels like a part of a community, and therefore, even if they disagree, they’d be more inclined to do so civilly. Someone who isn’t a regular reader and doesn’t intend to become one doesn’t have anything to lose, in their mind.

I have been reading for a few years, my email will be linkable to a few comments here where I may even have left a link to my website… but…

I just wanted to say that many people who are out there *simply* leaving the generic “great blog post” comments are out for the backlinks from niche relevant sites.

(Even if there is NO backlink like in this comment, I may be out there to gain some acceptance and pass the spam filters so that in my third generic comment from now, I can then add my backlink to my website…)

((And no, I wont do that… I am an ERE fan.))

Did you know that there are scripts out there which run little programs that scope the web for niche relevant blogs (preferably WP blogs like this one) to do one or two things? They either leave a backlink via a comment or they write up posts on their own blogs (again WP) and hope for a pingback from the non-spammy sites (like this, certainly not a spammy establishment here).

I think Jean has come across this scope of commenters…

Bloggers will often be forced to delete spam and offensive comments in order to keep their blog interesting and readable.

But some seem to go an extra step and delete posts that they simply disagree with. This might explain why certain blogs seem to have 99% “this is so great I think you’re wonderful” type comments at the bottom.

On one blog which shall remain nameless (no, it’s not ERE) I’ve posted complimentary comments on posts I liked, but found a perfectly reasonable post which disagreed with the premise of their article got deleted!

Great post, I agree.

I find on some PF blogs that it’s mainly other PF bloggers giving each other a pat on the back (figuratively speaking, of course). I’ve started skipping over many comments where the name is hyperlinked to a blog.

My other pet peeve is when blog resort to comment bait. Good quality content keeps me reading, even though I don’t comment often.