That's all I ask, that you just write.

[reddragdiva]

In my experience, level of LiveJournal commenting bears no relation to the importance of the text — it's related to number and quality of comment-friendly hooks. Which is just another writing technique and is orthogonal to the importance of the substance. Your mileage may vary.

(I blame apiphile.)

Comments

[smorgasbord.livejournal.com]

Most of the LJ posts that are more than memage are opinion pieces. To get more response from the readers they should be opinionated.

A piece putting forwards both sides of an argument in a balanced manner will get less reader response than a piece that assertively argues from one side.

[reddragdiva]

After a while I've become painfully aware of what will set off some of my beloved readers. That's why my geekier posts tend to be festooned with links backing up each assertion, bracketed "by the way" notes and so on. This keeps the comment level below 50.

[the_axel]

Exactly the same as a.g.

[reddragdiva]

a.g taught me far too much of what I know.

[kest]

And yet I find that the things what get comments are subtley different. In what way, I haven't quite figured out yet, but it keeps being unexpected.

[reddragdiva]

When I got into LJ in a big way, I tried posting some of my entries to a.g as well. Things that got a pile of comments here generated bugger-all response on a.g. Since I'd already fallen off a.g and LJ suited the sort of thing I felt like writing at the time, I just wrote here. I should probably post regular broadcasts to a.g anyway, I've been back again recently. It's still the Erith/Jennie/Endymion/Panurge show (which is fair enough if they're the ones interested); let's see what gets attention.

[death4breakfast.livejournal.com]

Yep. What he said.

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

But that should hardly come as a surprise. Any blog you write, if not with a target audience in mind, but at least for an audience, which is allowed and encouraged to react. LiveJournal to me is not necessarily a diary, but it's more like street theatre or even stand-up comedy. You are an actor, starring in the title role of your own life. I doubt that there are a lot of people who do not, even subconsciously, play their audience.

[reddragdiva]

And when you're me ... I would describe myself as having a phobia of not public speaking.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Comments or no, your audience still loves you. ;-)

[reddragdiva]

I want to make love to you all!

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Ach, for the times I've thought I'd use LJ the way I use my other online journals, and write a thoughtful missive or tract, just for the sake of doing some damn writing, and it has gotten nothing in response! Did I stun everyone? Bore them?

Politics, and LJ drama seem to get the best response. Have a dig at someone you know slightly! Be it Betty from Blue Velvet or George Bush, who cares. People seem to want stoushes.

Its like Days of Our Lives for the techno-set.

So I gave up writing anything coherent. A copout, I suppose.

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's just for the sake of the writing, then why does it matter whether anybody responds?

[reddragdiva]

It's harder to respond to something of substance. Fluff is easy: respond with fluff.

I strongly suggest you keep writing, and write for you.

There's always writing something for you then adding hooks. Hooks are technique, which is orthogonal to substance.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Surely that's just the definition of "comment-friendly".

[reddragdiva]

See recursion.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I provoked an ancient computing joke and all I got was this lousy six-thousand line Java backtrace.

[absinthea.livejournal.com]

It seems that timing of posting an entry also plays at least a minor role.

[reddragdiva]

As Axel points out, it may not be Usenet, but works by similar social rules.

[the_axel]

I don't know if you read theferrett (if you don't, you should).

If you don't, he wrote an entertaining article on comment whoring.

[reddragdiva]

I unsubscribed to Ferrett because he's entirely too long fucking winded. And pompous, which is worse. Omit needless words.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

I tend to get the most comments on messages that read like

Testing

honk!

which both amuses me and makes me kind of sad all at once.

[reddragdiva]

You bastard! You win.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Certainly true.

A big factor I think in the number of comments is whether you have threads develop, instead of it being just a series of individual replies to the initial post - which is affected by the sorts of replies that are written, and of course can be helped along by replying to your replies yourself. A useful measure therefore might be seeing how the number of direct replies to a comment is related to a given post.

[pixel-person.livejournal.com]

a comment for the sake of a comment ;P

[reddragdiva]

Reply!