Men are from Haloscan, Women are from Blogger
Suzanne, you are right. I am so busted. Here it is, almost a week after this appeal, and I still have two kinds of comments cluttering up my posts. What a slacker!
Ironically, my call for votes on Haloscan vs. Blogger netted me more response, even discounting my two seed-the-pot starter comments, than any other post on this blog. My sincere thanks to everyone who voted. You're all part of the democratic process, and can be proud of upholding the tradition that made this country great.
*Ahem.*
Okay. Let's look at the results and pretend we're writing a graduate thesis about it:
(Argh! Run! Run for the hills!)
The overall, red-state/blue-state total comes to: 7 for Blogger, 3 for Haloscan. That's a pretty clear statement on the part of the voluminous Booland fan base, even if you subtract Jack the Blogger's on-the-fence vote. (I'm not counting verbal feedback, i.e. Renaissance Woman's rhetorical inquiry as to why on Earth anyone would care.)
Upon analyzing the totals in more detail, however, I noticed a clear trend: All the decisive votes for Blogger were from women, while all three of the Haloscan votes were from our friends of the male persuasion. Moreover, the Blogger voters supported their position with arguments that Blogger comments are better for me, the blogger, in terms of portability, ease of retrieval, and user-friendliness, and with comparisons with their own experience as blog proprietors. That is, they imagined themselves in my position, and thought about what would be best for me.
It's harder to generalize about the Haloscan voters' reasoning, since there was such a small sample size. I was going to go out on a limb and say that the male voters considered the situation from a commenter's point of view, rather than from the blogger's (in other words, they thought only of themselves! The cads!) but then I realized that only The Zero Boss actually did that, and his comment could be construed as constructive advice for me, the blogger, on the theory that people post comments partly to generate more traffic for their own blogs, so if I want more comments (and who doesn't?) I'd be well-advised to make that easier for my commenters.
To complicate things further, I've developed a grudging fondness for that little pop-up window. But I can't get over the gone-in-four-months thing.
I thought about keeping them both, in the spirit of gender-inclusiveness (and major indecisiveness). But that would disrupt the flow of a comment thread. I did notice that for the past couple of weeks people tend to add comments to whichever thread is already started, regardless of whether they prefer one or the other.
So, in conclusion, it looks like I'll be getting rid of Haloscan. But not tonight; tonight I have to go to sleep. (Maybe sleep will work that little pompous-writing bug out of my system.) And not before I try to save the Haloscan comments in some way. Because I'm a woman who can't throw anything out, just like my mom.
Thank you all, and good night.
Ironically, my call for votes on Haloscan vs. Blogger netted me more response, even discounting my two seed-the-pot starter comments, than any other post on this blog. My sincere thanks to everyone who voted. You're all part of the democratic process, and can be proud of upholding the tradition that made this country great.
*Ahem.*
Okay. Let's look at the results and pretend we're writing a graduate thesis about it:
(Argh! Run! Run for the hills!)
The overall, red-state/blue-state total comes to: 7 for Blogger, 3 for Haloscan. That's a pretty clear statement on the part of the voluminous Booland fan base, even if you subtract Jack the Blogger's on-the-fence vote. (I'm not counting verbal feedback, i.e. Renaissance Woman's rhetorical inquiry as to why on Earth anyone would care.)
Upon analyzing the totals in more detail, however, I noticed a clear trend: All the decisive votes for Blogger were from women, while all three of the Haloscan votes were from our friends of the male persuasion. Moreover, the Blogger voters supported their position with arguments that Blogger comments are better for me, the blogger, in terms of portability, ease of retrieval, and user-friendliness, and with comparisons with their own experience as blog proprietors. That is, they imagined themselves in my position, and thought about what would be best for me.
It's harder to generalize about the Haloscan voters' reasoning, since there was such a small sample size. I was going to go out on a limb and say that the male voters considered the situation from a commenter's point of view, rather than from the blogger's (in other words, they thought only of themselves! The cads!) but then I realized that only The Zero Boss actually did that, and his comment could be construed as constructive advice for me, the blogger, on the theory that people post comments partly to generate more traffic for their own blogs, so if I want more comments (and who doesn't?) I'd be well-advised to make that easier for my commenters.
To complicate things further, I've developed a grudging fondness for that little pop-up window. But I can't get over the gone-in-four-months thing.
I thought about keeping them both, in the spirit of gender-inclusiveness (and major indecisiveness). But that would disrupt the flow of a comment thread. I did notice that for the past couple of weeks people tend to add comments to whichever thread is already started, regardless of whether they prefer one or the other.
So, in conclusion, it looks like I'll be getting rid of Haloscan. But not tonight; tonight I have to go to sleep. (Maybe sleep will work that little pompous-writing bug out of my system.) And not before I try to save the Haloscan comments in some way. Because I'm a woman who can't throw anything out, just like my mom.
Thank you all, and good night.
posted by elswhere | 11:40 PM
2 Comments:
Elswhere--tell your mama to allow anonymous posts!!! I am dying to comment on the physics of junk and to just say hi, as we haven't seen one another since your nuptials. Which were, to all of you who only know Elswhere in cyberspace, quite lovely, but marred by me making a big embarassing gulping noise during one of the most moving parts, in a horribly misguided attempt not to actually cry & draw attention to myself.
Well, I want to do exactly what you have done here! Having both types of comments. But I've been trying and trying for months and can't get it to work. Care to send me the code from your template, before you delete haloscan? LOL.
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