Experiment With Comments

We all like to increase awareness of our journal. It's part of what makes Blipfoto so addictive. The main way this can be done is through commenting. This entry concerns commenting, and my views on it.

There are 5 disctinct types of comments:

1. Comments that offer constructive criticism.
2. Comments with general chat, usually about the topic or photo Blipped.
3. Comments that state something similar to this: Amazing! 5/5
4. Comments that link to other entries.
5. Comments whose purpose is to promote an entry to the 'Spotlight' page.

I would say that I fall into categories 1 and 2 about 60% of the time, 3 and 4 40% of the time and 5 never. I find comments based on criticism and general chat about the photo very helpful and appreciate the time it takes my fellow Blippers to look, think, and write about my entry. Number 3 is pretty common but all the same, getting an 'excellent' from a high profile Blipper is very rewarding and even if they're not high profile, it's nice to know that the image has made the viewer react in some way.

Going back to what I said in the first paragraph, the fundamental reason behind 4 and 5 is, I believe, to increase awareness which we all crave to some extent.

Concerning category 5: The more popular Blippers have no problem gaining 20 plus comments an image, guaranteeing Spotlight success each and every time. What this means however is that less popular but perhaps (dare I say) better photographers don't have the same chance of getting noticed. (Disclaimer: I do NOT include myself in the latter category!) I have however witnessed on a number of occasions, the same person commenting on an entry multiple times purely, so it seems, to bump the entry into the Spotlight page. (The fact that an entry can be edited afterwards, therefore making additional comments superfluous, would support this statement.)

I'd be lying if I said I didn't get sidetracked by addictiveness of watching my stats increase and the easiest way to do that is to stick to comment types 3 and 4. Having said that, I would like to increase number of comments I make in the 1 and 2 categories to a much higher percentage.

Yesterday, I removed the comments option from my entry, originally by mistake, but as an experiment after realising that. In my experience, the image I took yesterday would normally have generated around 15-20 comments from my regulars and a few chance clickers. With the comments option disabled I wanted to see whether the same Blippers would express their opinion about my entry through the 'ratings' option.

Of the 89 views I got yesterday, 3 people voted.

Now, I am in the camp that the mechanics behind Blip are pretty much spot-on and that it is us humans that do with the system what we will. It takes a maximum of 5 seconds (perhaps more with thinking time) to rate an image. The system is there whether you think the photo is good or not. There is, in my mind, just as much validity in a '1' vote as there is in a '5'. What kind of difference would it make the site if everybody who commented also took the few extra seconds to rate an image? Imagine the difference if everybody who viewed took the extra few seconds to rate the image!

Before I go, I really hope I've not come across as a bad sport who isn't as popular as he would like. That's not the intention at all!

To conclude, I took the comments off, and by relying on the ratings option didn't really get any idea at all what you all thought of yesterday's entry (with the exception of two Blippers who used my previous entry to comment and one who sent me a text!) which is a shame.