How to Be Taken Seriously in Blog Comments or Mailing Lists

I moderate a handful of blogs and sit on a number of mailing lists. Occasionally, people will post to a list and get no response or leave a blog comment that gets ignored or deleted. Here's why.

You won't be taken seriously by me or anyone else unless you:

• Use reasonable English grammar. Even if you don't speak English as your first language, you can at least obey some basic English conventions, like capitalization and punctuation. Amazingly, it is usually English-speakers who are the worst at this.
• If you have a lot to say, break it up into paragraphs. One giant paragraph is annoying.
• Actually read what you've responded to. It's amazing how much misreading or skimming of a post people do before responding. Closely read the post to see if your criticism or concern has already been addressed.
• Be reasonable when what you are responding to is reasonable. Respond to reasonable discussions reasonably. Ignore unreasonable discussions. (This is hard.)
• Participate in the discussion. If you only post with problems or to complain and never contribute solutions or interesting commentary, you don't have much credibility.
• Don't comment anonymously. If you believe what you are saying, be an adult and put your name on it. If you are too cowardly to leave your name, you probably shouldn't be commenting.

So there you have it. Feel free to comment. :)

Originally posted at Sunday, March 4, 2007 | Comments (5) | Trackback (0)