Give a blogger a boost

In response to a lot of discussion that's happened lately on edublogs about feelings of isolation and frustration, I came up with a few ideas for all of us to help fellow bloggers along, and maybe even get something back ourselves. Here's the short version. If you want to read more, click here.

1. Slow down. Take maybe 10% of the time you devote to your own blog, and use it to read a little more broadly, think a little longer, comment on some blogs you don't visit very much. Shifting gears is good for the brain, so you'll benefit, and your comments will leave some feedback that those bloggers have been craving (and I'm not talking about stats here, I'm talking about engagement).

2. Stop. As a variation on #1, let's all declare a blog holiday: everyone refrains from publishing blog posts for one day, and just comments, again preferably on blogs you haven't focused on lately. Face it, just about any blog --even the top 1000-- or its readership, would not suffer if it's volume were reduced by 5% or so. In return, more people will have a little more time to read what you've already got, and maybe give you some interesting feedback you otherwise would have missed. We slow thinkers actually have things to say now and then, so give us a chance.

3. Don't keep every kitten that comes to your door (you'll have to read the blog post to know what this means!). Encourage threads to loop back to their starting place somehow. Jon cited a comment by Vicki (couldn't find a link) that the conversation doesn't belong to anyone in particular. She's probably right, to a point. But at the same time we could gain more by giving a hearing to the new voice that goes with the new idea.

4. Give one another the benefit of the doubt. Overall, people have been very patient with each other through this discussion, even though comment writing is right down there with email for being a poor vehicle for communicating emotion and nuance. We don't really want all the buzz to be about this anyway, do we?

5. Sorry, this won't make sense if you don't read the blog post.

6. We're all working to make a difference and blogs are just one part of that. We can go a little easier on ourselves as we try to take in the bigger picture.