Blogs and Comments

When I started doing this blog around two and a half years ago, I was doing it for me as a trial to see what blogging was all about and to try out the software. After looking at a few of the different options out there at the time I settled on WordPress on my own hosted web space. I stared out writing about anything that came to mind, but it’s gone a lot more Scout related, with the occasional other stuff. That’s probably as my Scouting is a bigger part of my life again.

When I started writing away, I never really expected anyone to read anything I was writing and it was well over a year before anyone made any comments. I guess more people started to read my stuff when I found some of the excellent blogs from my Scouting colleagues in the States and added them to the links list. I think it was the Lone Star Scouter blog (now re-christened Troop 483 Blog – must update!) I first came across, which then led to the others. They in turn added me to their lists and comments started to be left on my blog and also by me on the others. I must admit it came as a pleasant shock to find out people were leaving comments and that we all had many things in common.

Of course, I’ve had to put a couple of serious spam traps in place as the blog would have ended up as one giant advert for gambling and less savoury products! In fact I’ve had over 2500 spam comments which have been caught and deleted before I installed another anti spam device on top of the existing one.

Anyway, so far all but two of the comments (that weren’t spam) have been positive and friendly. They were criticisms, but wasn’t nasty, so I let it through (see the Another Scout Bashing post). Of course I am able to ignore or delete anything I want and that’s my choice as it’s my blog! But so far so good.

The thing that’s made me think of this is that there has been a rather negative comment sent to Jerry over at the Scoutmaster Minute. It was posted by someone anonymous and Jerry was thinking of dumping it but decided to reply and explain his reasons (see here & here). I think he did the right thing by explaining his position and not just ignoring the comment. It is easy, of course, just to hit the delete button and let it be at that, but to respond and explain yourself does take some time and thought.

I believe if you don’t agree with something someone has written (and I’ve never been in that position with the blogs I read), then comment by all means, but do it in a non personal way so it comes across as a debating point and not an attack. We all can’t be of the same mind on everything, but constructively putting our point across is the way to go.

So thanks to Gary, Steve, Shawn, Joy, Jerry and the PTC media crew, long may you keep on blogging and brightening up my days with your blogs and comments. And I hope you all find what I have to say at least vaguely interesting!

2 Replies to “Blogs and Comments”

  1. In the words of the late night talk show side kick Ed McMahon…
    “YOU ARE CORRECT SIR!”
    Blogging has become a great medium to share the Scouting adventure. I think that we all do it out of a love for the program that has been time tested as well as tested in the courts, the public, and yes, by those that feel it necessary to bash.
    Simple truth is as PT Barnum said, you can please most of the people, most of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
    So we keep blogging and Scouting, because we love it.

    It is nice to see your blog, and personally I am glad that you have shifted most of your focus to Scouting. It is nice to read what is going on over in the UK. Shawn, Steve, Gary and I pretty much have the same perspective.. so it is refreshing to get a glimpse of Scouting that is different.

    Have a Great Scouting Day!

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