200,000 Points Just for Commenting - A Milestone that Actually Means Something to Me

I was looking for something on my Points Summary a few days ago, and I realized that I was nearing an interesting milestone.  I have surpassed 200,000 points for commenting now.  I have left 19,770 total comments, and I've received 38,557 on my AR blog as of this writing.


What is the real significance here?


Well, most of the solid friendships I have forged on ActiveRain have come through comment streams, often when we were hijacking a post, or when my own posts were hijacked and ended up as a free-for-all party atmosphere of comments.  I have also had some terrific discussions on far-reaching topics both within and outside of the real estate industry.


I admit that I haven't ever felt compelled to comment on someone's post just because they commented on mine, unless I find their posts to be of interest to me.  Perhaps this is a bit selfish, but there's simply no way to keep up when you garner a good number on your posts.  I am thankful that my writing gets a good deal of attention - I consider this a blessing.


Similarly, I used to try to respond to EVERY single comment from my posts.  I was able to keep up with this for many months, then one day I realized that it was just plain time-consuming.  Now, I respond to direct questions (sometimes by email) and to disagreements, although only if I feel that they have merit, frankly.  Some people just like to argue.  I am not one of those people.  :-)


I enjoy finding new bloggers to read and correspond with, both here and elsewhere.  I will admit that I haven't had as much time for this of late, meaning I stick to the more familiar "Subscribed" list for the most part these days.


I used to challenge myself and some of my closer friends here to see if we could write comments longer than the actual post itself when we would spot extremely short posts, but (again) this was hard to maintain for very long.


One of my posts ended up with over 3,000 comments, and then it broke, meaning I can't see it anymore because it always causes a timeout.  Bob Stewart referred to this as the "price of fame", and I suppose he's right.  If you didn't see that post, it was basically a collection of all of my previous posts to date that had received over 100 comments.  At the time, I think there were about 30 of them - I have no idea how many I have had since.


I have to admit that when I see "cut and paste" comments, this is one of my biggest pet peeves.  In other words, there are a good number of members who just post identical comments 10 times per day, often for many days.  I have contacted some of these in an effort to give them some constructive advice.  Not surprisingly, one of them responded with what appeared to be a generic email that was slightly tweaked.  As with the generic comments ("Thanks for your thoughts on this topic." or "This is terrific info - keep it up!", etc.), the email he sent me made little sense in context.  If you intend to use the same comment over and over again, at least consider making it interesting so that it isn't so darn obvious to all of us.  Points alone will not bring business your way - relationships will.


Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to respond to my posts over the past 28 months.  I appreciate it more than you could know.  This immediate feedback has helped to shape me as a writer.


Thanks for reading! 


P.S. The photo above is an actual mile stone from the Stonehenge area.  I found it on Flickr with the Creative Commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsingapore/2418755175/


 


     


 

OR
Already have Account?