Why Most Blog Visitors Don’t Comment

Stephen J. Dubner of Freakonomics fame asks a curious question on his blog – Who Comments on Blogs, and Why? There are all sorts of interesting responses like:

• their comment/opinion has already been stated or they don’t have anything useful to contribute
• comments are like conversations, so (1) they’d have to read through all comments posted before posting themselves or (2) comments become disjointed and streams are difficult to follow
• shyness, value anonymity
• requiring people to register deters people
• lack of time to formulate a comment

Personally, I also rarely leave comments unless I’m passionate about the topic being discussed. Even then, it varies. Today, I tried to leave a comment on someone’s blog. It contained two links to articles from scientific magazines that refuted the author’s points. The comment was never posted. Perhaps the blog’s author choose not to post it. Perhaps the post got lost in his spam filter. Who can tell?

In most cases, I’ll just post to one of my own blogs rather than leave a comment – as I decided to do in this case.

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