Blogland Faux Pas

Today a very kind reader from the "daily in December" writing group, a person I have never met, sent me an email that, among other kindnesses, expressed concern that she had left comments on this blog but had never seen them appear. She asked if I had seen them, or if they had disappeared into the blogosphere.

I had, in fact, wondered over the past month at the lack of a single comment on my blog, when I was writing more than I have in years. But I was not getting any emails from the blog, as I always had before, telling me when a comment was awaiting moderation. It has been so long since I wrote here on any regular basis, and I know so many people use Wordpress, I wondered if perhaps my blog is just too difficult for commenting, or maybe my writing was just not interesting enough to warrant comment. But I just kept at it, telling myself it was good for developing discipline, whether or not anyone were reading what I wrote.

This email, however, led me to go to the "dashboard" and do a bit more exploration. It took a bit, but I finally found the hiding place of about 25 comments people had left, that were just sitting there waiting!

Having just finished watching the movie Emma this evening (the Gwynneth Paltrow version), I can hear voices in my head speaking in lovely British accents, having a conversation about the impropriety of keeping people's comments waiting, the lack of generosity it shows, and how I ought to have been more diligent in ascertaining the situation behind the lack of comments. What a poor example I have provided of blog etiquette.

But mostly I'm just glad someone pointed this out, and that I found the comments. And I do hope I can figure out how to get some kind of notification sent to my email for the future. Any help with that is welcome.

To all the temporarily banished commenters, thank you for your patience and good will! I assure you I will be on the lookout for comments in the future!