I’ve activated a feature here at the site to let you subscribe via email to follow-up comments on a post. To do so, you’ve actually got to leave a comment yourself — including (duh) an email address; then check the little box labeled “Notify me of followup comments…,” which appears just above the reCaptcha form.
Background: Why do this? Because I’m posting less often, I (and other regulars!) are actually visiting RAMH less often. This means that conversations via comments tend to sprawl over the course of days, even weeks.
Also, I’ve been using my “smart phone” more often these days to access blogs blocked (for whatever reason) by my employer. Because the phone loads Web pages much more slowly than a real wired Web browser, constantly returning to a blog just to see if there have been more comments is a constant drain on my patience. Thus, I’ve come to appreciate the “subscribe to comments” feature on other people’s blogs: I need return to an earlier post only when I see a follow-up comment to which I want to reply.
We return you now to our regularly scheduled broadcast.
fg says
I can understand why you have resisted it but actually very handy. If I leave a comment I am naturally compelled to return to see what others and yourself think when I really should be doing something else. Thanks for the upgrade!
Oh and I hope M Atwood was ripping! Please give us a review.
Froog says
I actually check in on my favourite blogs a lot more often than I check my e-mail! But I’m sure this will be a welcome upgrade for many of your readers.
With 10 posts already in February, the “posting less often” excuse seems a trifle unconvincing.
John says
fg: Well, I didn’t resist it so much as never noticed it. The theme which the blog uses doesn’t come with a built-in “subscribe to comments” feature — not until I started to use the phone for bl0g-reading did it even occur to me that I might want to add it here.
The rhythm of bloglife, most places, goes something like this:
But the actual period of time during which that rhythm holds, for a given post, is probably pretty much just a day or two. People move on. They find shiny objects in other corners of the Web. And even though later comments come in on a given post which might actually stimulate further conversation, even active participants can miss those later comments.
(Most recently, occasional visitor Eileen offered a very thoughtful contribution to last week’s “Paying Attention to the Magical” post… six days after the post itself! Of course, I get email notices of ALL comments, so I didn’t miss it myself — though I’ve yet to reply. But I sorta hated the idea that others who’d gone back-and-forth about the topic might simply miss Eileen’s comment.)
Froog: You once told me that you tend to leave favorite blogs open in multiple browser tabs/windows, and just periodically refresh them to see if there’ve been any updates. If I did that, Firefox would completely devour all my PC’s RAM within the space of about two days. (I have a LOT of favorites (not all of which I comment on)!)
Ha! to that last line, but 10 entries in 22 days feels very much like “less often” to me. Compare it, for one example, to your own 32 (so far)-in-February tally.