Posted on by Norman Palardy

Silent readership

I’m curious about something. Actually I’m curious about a LOT of things; just ask my Canadian Skip Patrol instructors 😛
But I’m REALLY curious about one thing when it comes to this blog.

I can see there are a decent number of readers & views thanks to the stats that WordPress gives me. But, there’s very few comments.

I’m really curious why people don’t comment. Do the same things that make it so you don’t comment here also apply to other venues like the Xojo forums ? The reason I ask is that, as anyone who knows me well can vouch for, when I have something to say I say it. And if I have a strong opinion about something its nearly impossible to get me to shut up. Again you can ask anyone who knows me well – and if it’s Bob’s Keeney reading this I’m 100 sure he’s just shaking his head going “Yup!”

Even just a “Hey thanks I read that post and it was informative” is great feedback to get. Or “Hey I found a typo”. And yeah you can tell me I’m being dumb if I post something dumb 🙂

So what is it that keeps you from commenting ? And yes I get the irony of asking people who don’t comment on other posts to comment on this one 🙂

22 Replies to “Silent readership”

  1. Two reasons:
    A. I read the blog posts in a RSS reader app, and rarely click through to the web site.

    B. When I do, I have content blocking on and don’t see either the comments or a means to comment.

    2. Yup, same story here.
      Subscribed Blogs just as RSS Feeds (Feedly & Reeder.app), Forums mostly in a WebBrowser.

  2. Oh, and I really do appreciate your posts, especially the ones revealing some obscure feature of Xojo that I had overlooked. Thanks.

  3. i read all your posts and Bob’s too. i use iOS RSS apps (newsify) which scrubs out ads and comment fields and does a full text download for full offline reading. so that probably mucks up your stats as well. so for me to make a comment is difficult, because iOS sucks for typing (doing it now though). if i used a browser i might contribute more. also i’m not using xojo at the moment.

    1. Doesnt seem to mess up stats as far as I can tell just I see lots of readers and no comments and that made me curious

  5. I don’t use an RSS reader, but I check and read your blog regularly. I especially appreciate your postings about performance tweaks and your latest explanation on Classes, Objects and Instances. It’s all great content.

    But I guess I don’t post a simple thank you too often, because likewise I notice that there are not many other commenters , and so I guess I don’t want to appear to be like an overly enthusiastic one-man fan club 😉

    I suppose there might be some elusive tipping-point to get past on the number of comments, before others (or at least myself) fell free to express what they are thinking in comments. That’s just a theory of course, but I’m known to be wrong sometimes. Well, lots of the time actually.

    But I do know at a personal level, we all like being appreciated for our efforts to help others.

    With that said, your work Norman is great and your opinion important. I appreciate very much you taking the time to create your content here.

  6. Thanks everyone for the comments.
    I appreciate them all and welcome whatever ones you care to post in the future.
    The feedback is very welcome

  7. I also read your posts via RSS. While we do use XOJO for much of our developement of in-house tools, we do not produce any commercial software. I really just like to read what the “big” guys using xojo are doing and how I can use it to improve our tools.

    Your time and effort is appreciated.

  8. Norm I tend not to respond to blogs unless they are asking a direct question (like this one) AND I have something to say that adds to the conversation. I dont just reply for a few reasons (time to write the reply, my reply not adding to the conversation/post, etc).

  9. Like I said this was more just a real curiosity for me given I could see the readership numbers but few comments.

    But thats just me 🙂

  10. Since I’m commenting quite a bit I am probably not the target of the question … but I do have another question which might be good for a blog post:

    In children of a window we should keep track of the parent window by using WeakRef.

    But what if I have a class cDepartment with a list of employees defined as Employees() as cEmployee – should that then better also be defined as WeakRef? And why or why not?

    Thanks for your blog, and may the writing continue for a long time (being selfish here).

    All the best for the new year!

    1. You have commented on several posts and your supposition that my question didnt apply to you is correct.

      Your question about the use of WeakRefs is indeed interesting and I’ll see what I can do about writing a post about this in the near future.

  11. I don’t have anything useful to contribute, so I try to reduce my noise. But seeing as you asked for noise, this is mine.

    In person, however, things are quite different. Many have tried to shut me up but few have succeeded without resorting to a taser …

  12. I like to consider my blog as a conversation, albeit one that can’t be had in person with all participants.
    Hence why I wondered about the replies as a one sided conversation isn’t terribly useful.
    I appreciate that there are times when readers might reply and times when they don’t, can’t, or won’t for whatever reason.

    I’d just like to encourage everyone to reply when you feel the need and definitely to say when there are aspects of a blog post that need another post or other clarifications.

    Thanks All !

  13. Thinking about my question I think the answer might be: if the user can close the object (eg a window) then use WeakRef. If you close it in code then you can use the object itself for improved readability, but you might leak memory if you forget to close all instances.

    1. Yeah weakrefs are definitely something you have to take into consideration what usage model you want to support
      I do have a longer post I’m working on in answer to your initial question

  14. Looking forward to it! 👍

    Have you considered writing for xDev? Maybe with the provision to at some point bundle your articles in a book to sell?

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