I asked for comments on our 9/11 coverage because people seem to be in different places with it and have received some very useful feedback. I’ll turn to that subject in a separate post, but let me address here a request that was made several times, which is to open (re-open, actually) comments.
I’d love to do that and I know you’d enjoy it. I did have comments open for the first year of the site. But there are logistical reasons why it would probably sink the ship if I were to do so.
I just checked the site stats and we are now fairly consistently over 30,000 hits a day. That doesn’t take into account the 1,200 people who receive the blog by “home delivery” or the many hundreds who read it on Facebook, Twitter, Networked Blogs, etc.
What that means is that there are many thousands of you, dualistically speaking, and only one of me or nine of us, depending.
I’m not sure people are aware of the amount of work it takes to administer comments. It means being quick to review the “pending” comments because if I don’t people write me and ask what happened to their comment. If I don’t have WordPress sift out the comments that use foul language or call 2012 Ascension people fruitcases, etc., this whole site loses its edge big time.
Administering comments means actually finding and responding to those that ask for a response. It means fending off the flame wars and light wars that break out. It means reading the spam filter because some legitimate comments get caught up there and people actually do write me and ask me what happened to their comments.
There’s another side to it too. There are people who, for some reason, make a career out of saying really nasty things to others. I’ve never been able to figure out why people would want to do that. One of the reasons I had to moderate comments was to weed out those nastygrams – some aimed at me, some aimed at others. I’m not sure people realize the impact it can have on a writer to be bombarded with comments like that from people who enjoy making their impact that way. That side of things alone gradually wore me down.
In the end, I asked the Boss what I should do and he said to open up an online forum and keep comments closed. There are in fact two online discussion groups or forums that provide the sense of community I know that many people want:
2012 Scenario discussion group at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/2012Scenario/ and Share 11 (Share the Truth) at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/Share11/ Both groups are mature and level-headed Lightworkers and Starseeds and just waiting for your contribution. (OK, OK, not actually waiting. Figure of speech.)
Someone asked me to remove the words “Comments Closed.” Those words are not something I have discretion over. They are a WordPress feature.
And let’s face it. Comments may not be open, but, if it’s telling me what you like and don’t like, I do get lots and lots of email from you on the subject.
So it isn’t as if I’m somehow cloistered in a cave. I do hear you through email and through the two discussion groups. This is by no means a one-way conversation – for me at least. (Yes, it’s 7:00 in the morning and, no, I haven’t slept a wink. You can bet your boots I may in an hour or two – as soon as I finish what needs to be said.)
Over to the other side of things in the next post.