Monday, July 31, 2006

Everyone's Responsibility is No One's

There have been cases where people have been mugged or assaulted in earshot of many witnesses. The witnesses saw the assault or heard the calls for help, but did nothing. When interviewed later, they responded that they figured someone else was taking care of the problem. The issue was that there were too many witnesses. In similar cases, where the witness thought no one else could hear or act, they were much more likely to take action.

Three times on this blog, I've asked my readers to do me a favor. I had a friend whose mother was dying and later had died of cancer. I put out a request for some kind comments on his blog. Nothing. Yesterday as part of the Carnival of the Cats I asked my readers to visit the blog of a fellow whose cat had killed a scorpion in their house, but had been severely injured in the fight. Following an Instalanche and the subsequent massive blog traffic, only a few people had stopped by to offer their comments on the fellow's blog.

This is not in any way a condemnation of those that did not do so, it is merely an observation that blog visitor behavior seems to follow the model of the many witness scenario.

2 comments:

Justin said...

Commenters are, by their nature, rare. Moat people just read.

Heck, I blog myself and rarely comment.

Anonymous said...

I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend's mom. I will pray for her soul's gentle repose and for her family, that the Lord will console them through their grief.

I must have somehow missed those posts, (although I had been on vacation and 'out of station' for quite some time), and even now am unable to find them. Maybe you can re-post the links to the ones about the mom and the one about the friend who lost the cat, too, so folks can send them a note and a prayer.

But, Justin says it correctly, most folks read over the blogs quickly and rarely leave comments, at least not on ordinary blogs! And even so, you certainly get more comments than I ever receive!

When I feel kinda bad about having no comments (in spite of the number of hits I get a day), yet other blogs seem to have SO many, my daughter tells me those are the celebrities and she says, "The celebritiy blogs get so many more comments cuz folks want to be associated with them!" LOL I had never thought of that before. Anyway, it made me feel a little better.

I am sure you know that lots of folks look at your blog, from the hits you get, and it also depends on how often you post new entries, because many folks only get in from the blog aggregates and those post only as blogs are updated! But getting them to leave comments, I have no idea how to do that at all.

God bless you, KT!