Dear Lurker

Ben is very wise. He says I shouldn’t try to scare you out of hiding. But I’ve always been a little hot headed and impetuous. So I’m going to temporarily ignore his wise advice and try to attract further lurkers out of the shadows.

Over in the comments thread on that post – one Mr Rodeo Clown – informed me that he lurks occasionally but isn’t a regular because he is intimidated by the frequency of posts.

I read a fair few of your posts, but I’m hesitant to add such a prolific poster to my RSS, as I already have more to read than I really have time for.

I tend to use st-eutychus as a buffet to feed on once I’ve exhausted my reader.

I guess that makes me the Sizzler of the blog world – which is fitting, because this is one of my most popular posts of all time.

What say you, humble lurker, would you read more if I wrote less?

Comments

Anika Q says:

I must say that I almost deleted you from my feed reader during the “blog-off”.

I do read…sort of quickly and superficially. (No offense – I read a lot of blogs quickly and superficially. And there are millions I don’t read at all.) I just don’t comment all that much. I suppose I should comment and say “That’s really good” more…that way I am maintaining the right to disagree vehemently when the whim takes me. (Or at least, I assume that’s how your comment policy works?)

Nathan says:

That’s something like how it works.

I write superficially too, so I’m not worried about being skim read.

Sometimes I write deeply – those are usually the long posts.

I remember in the olden days before i knew you better and read your blog regularly, I would drop by, and get a bit baffled and leave. The sheer quantity unsettled me a bit. there’s someting comforting about scrolling down a bit and seeing the post you read yesterday, and then going from there. But when I’d scroll down and see a million new posts, and no familiar posts on that page to ground me, I would think ‘too hard to catch up on it all- I’ll catch up some other time’ and just leave.

And while that is vastly preferable to bloggers who update once a leap year, I think it attracts skimmers and visitors, rather than people who will settle in to reading everyday.