Trolls

Have you ever had to deal with a troll or another troublesome blog visitor? In the real world, we are often advised to deal with bullies as well as small annoyances by just ignoring them and therefore taking away their power. This would seem to be particularly relevant online when a rogue commenter could lose interest quickly and never return. Even if they do stick around, what's the worst they can do.

Unfortunately, this has some drawbacks. In the real world, ignoring really isn't that great of an idea if it could escalate, and it could easily escalate online. In the worst case scenario, you could end up with a cyber stalker on your hands. Deleting or flagging the comment  might just give them ammo and cause the problem to quickly escalate.

In my opinion, the best solution is one I have not implemented, mostly because I haven't had the need to: a commenting policy. This way, if you do find yourself needing to delete a comment or block a user, you can direct them to the policy to show them why you are doing it. Consistency will weed out some of the problems and cooperative readers will follow the policy, which will get rid of problems that are only caused by misunderstandings.

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Please Advertise

I want to make sure that I've read as many of my readers' blogs as possible, so please post a link to your blog if you have one.

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Maintaining Multiple Blogs

Does anyone keep more than one blog? Currently, I have three, although one I do not do much with. There is this one, of course, and my other blog, Don't Let Higher Ed Eat Your Soul. Now, however, I feel like I'm getting all kinds of ideas for more blogs that I would like to start. The problem is, I do not think I would be able to keep up with more blogs than I already have. coming up with ideas is not an issue to me. My biggest problem seems to be advertising. I have found several sites that work well for advertising my first blog, and since in this blog I talk about blogging, that's pretty easy as well. Still, writing good comments takes time, and I don't want to be spending all of my time sitting at a computer, browsing the internet. Andd what about ideas that don't have a simple niche or other blogs in their niche?

I mentioned that coming up with ideas for blog posts is not a problem. Sitting down to write out a decently lengthed and well-researched blog is. Checking facts, finding links, and of course, finding a wide enough angle to blog from takes time and sometimes I just don't have the motivation.

Also, do all of my ideas for new blogs really need their own blogs? Couldn't some of them be combined?

What do you think, readers? How many blogs do you maintain? What are the biggest challenges that come from having more than one blog? How about the rewards?

Encouraging Comments

To me, having regular comments on my blog is the surest sign that I am doing well. It means that what I write is important enough that it warrants a response, and that people are sticking around the site long enough to to type something up.

So, in order to get more comments and, as a result, feel more successful, I'm doing a weekly post every friday where I feature one comment from the previous week. My first featured post can be seen here.

Do you think this is a good idea? How do you encourage comments? And how do you tell if you blog is a success? Is it solely personal?

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