It is now just over four months since Accidental Blogger was launched. As I have said before, the fledgeling blog was helped enormously from its inception by the kind words and endorsements of other influential and established bloggers. Now it appears that we have a modest but regular readership – some of whom wish to remain "anonymous". The traffic here fluctuates wildly depending on who is linking to us. The biggest boost still always comes from Brian Leiter whose links are guaranteed to make the counter go nuts! We are gleefully grateful for that. Accidental Blogger has also made it to the blogrolls of some other wonderful blogs whose support is greatly appreciated.
Readers may have taken note of Joe and Anna’s excellent posts during the month of February when they came on board to help keep the ball rolling during my absence. In fact so enjoyable was their effort that I have extended the invitation to them to continue blogging here for as long as they wish and as often as they can. Both have accepted.
A few words about Joe and Anna. Joe is an aspiring law student who had enrolled last year at Tulane Law. His school year was barely a couple of weeks old when it was rudely cut short by the fury of Katrina. Since then he has returned home and applied to other law schools, at one of which he will resume his studies next fall. Joe and I do not know each other in the "real" world. We met through blogging when Joe visited Accidental Blogger (and I visited Unreal City ) in its early days and left many thoughtful comments.
Anna Levine is an attorney – she and I DO know each other outside the blogosphere. We also participated in our first blogging experience together at another (now defunct) blog Dissemination. So I am familiar with her incisive writing style and wide ranging interests.
Politically, probably all three authors here fall in the same part of the liberal spectrum. But due to the difference in our age (Joe and Anna are in the same age bracket as my children) and world experience, we hope to be able to present enough variety to satisfy discerning readers. One aspect of this blog is still a bit of a puzzle to us authors. We have wondered privately why readers of Accidental Blogger are so quiet in the "comments" section. Are they bashful or are we not asking the right questions? Unless the post is really provocative (Danish cartoons, spoilt brat lawyers, right wing hypocrisy), readers tend to read silently ( the stat counter tells us that they ARE reading). Perhaps some readers, including other bloggers, will weigh in and shed some light on this confounding phenomenon. Joe, Anna and I would like to know. Thanks for reading.
Accidental Blogger 
8 responses to “Blogging News – Accidental Blogger(s)”
I feel like I’ve always been lucky enough to have a pretty high number of comments relative to readers, but I don’t really have any idea why this is. I do know that a lot of times I am surprised by which posts receive the most comments; I’ll post something I think is provocative and it gets none, and then I’ll throw up a short post without really thinking about it and before I know it there’s a dozen comments.
LikeLike
Part of the reason may be controversy and the demographics of your readership. Controversy spawns comments and readership that disagrees with your views spawn discussions in the comments.
LikeLike
Dada & Devanshu:
From what I understand you saying is:
1. There is no way to predict which post will generate comments. And therefore, the blogger cannot deliberately “design” a post to elicit reaction from readers.
2. If readers generally agree with the opinions of the blogger, they won’t comment. So it is safe to presume that we are getting all left leaning liberal readers here. Hey, in that case, how about an occasional “We agree!”
Who knows what is at play. Perhaps we are sewing up too many loose ends and leaving no room for speculation. Or perhaps, we are scary -and we don’t even have a wooden head :-) ! Well whatever it may be, thanks a lot for reading.
LikeLike
We agree!
I think you may be on to something with the ‘sewing up loose ends’ comment. A lot of posts that generate a lot of comments (me speaking as an observer/participant of flame wars) are ones that point out an inflamatory article on left/right wing web site and allow the comments to tear it apart (or put it back together again). This may be why Dadahead’s short posts draw more comments.
LikeLike
A comment above used :-), which I much prefer to the usual :)
Speaking of which, I recently stumbled across the following:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm
(P.S. I think shorter posts would generate more commentary).
LikeLike
Wilham 3.d:
(I think shorter posts would generate more commentary).
But we are a bit “talky” here. At least Anna and I are – Joe is a man of somewhat fewer words. So I guess we are resigned to having silent readers. But it is not so bad. Readers are opening up a bit. We will see. I am glad you approve of my choice of emoticon. I am usually averse to using them. Thanks for the interesting link.
LikeLike
Anna for president, 2008! Run, Anna, run!
LikeLike
Hello ! This is very [url=http://www.google.com/bb497]good[/url] site !!
LikeLike