Saturday, May 17, 2008

Five Comments In 5 Minutes - Day 17 Task

Tēnā koutou katoa
Welcome to you all

I had a long think about this activity after I'd read Michele Martin's Day 17 task.


I planned what I thought was a workable strategy. I still think it's achievable but the risk factors inherent in the Net are probably more of a problem than sheer speed of keyboard use.

Here's a summary of what I did:
  • found 5 blog sites that I'd comment on
  • opened each site in a separate tab (I use Firefox)
  • wrote comment in separate named notepad file
  • pasted associated comment & completed data in required fields
  • submitted as I went
In theory, it should be possible to get all comment fields completed with accompanying data, such as ID fields and anti-spam info in place before flicking through sending each in turn. I didn't do that.

In practice, this is fraught with difficulties since invariably there will be delays with coComment data transfers and other responses from 'the system' that tend to cause delays.

In my case I got timed-out, on Michele Martin's site as it happens, and one comment simply didn't 'go up' first time so I had to go back and send it again.

It took me roughly 8 minutes by the time I got back to Michele's site to try to fix what the problem was there. I never did get my comment to her. I'd had the same problem with her blog site and another typepad site the evening before.

So I suppose one should have a contingency plan or two, such as having an extra few sites ready with prepared comments just in case of any problems encountered with one or other of the 5 chosen sites to comment on.

But. . .

. . . .what is the point of all this?

What's to be gained by possibly making a real swan-up by pasting the wrong comment (with the wrong name) and sending it to someone's blog for the world to ogle at and think "What the heck's Ken playing at? Has he gone completely round the bend or what?"

It goes against all the good advice I've been learning recently from posts and comments about reading the post AND reading accompanying comments before blundering in and possibly saying something already commented on. Or worse - getting the wrong end of the stick by not understanding the original post.

After I'd tried
four times without success to get my comment through to Michele's site I thought to myself, I'll never do that again!


Ka kite ano
Catch ya later

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uh oh--sorry for all the problems posting to my site, Ken. When I used to use comment authentication, that would happen sometimes, but it hasn't seemed to happen since I removed that. A little frustrating, I'm sure!

Christine Martell said...

I'm with you on, Why? I can't imagine even starting on this challenge. I am way too reflective, not a chance I could get through five comments in five minutes. Probably why twitter also challenges me, short snippets without a lot of thought don't make much sense to me, my brain just isn't wired that way.

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

Kia Ora Tatou.

@Michele - what a pian that an adjustment that should make your blog more friendly is actually causing problems for commenters. What can you do to redress this Michele? I suspect that others are having the same problem (possibly typad users? I don't know).
@Christine - wekk at keast your brain is wired. I wondered about mine halfway through the task that prompted your comment here having reviewed my principles about commenting - but it's a bit like Simon Says - "that's what teachers do". For me it was a strategic exercise though, and indeed most of the mechanics of this challenge have also been like that - not the dynamics.

Ka kite ano

Anonymous said...

Strange that this task ended up in being technically able to be a serial commenter, rather than being able to write a few comments in a limited time ;-)
I guess the next step is to use a spam tool to win here :-)

testecarla said...

Ken,

Thanks for sharing your views on this specific challenge as I'm exactly trying to do it right now and no way I'll manage to do it! You had a full strategy, I just started from the listed ones on the challenge, so my time is up and you're the second blog I'm commenting at.

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

@ Christophe - Well that was exactly my point and strategy. I didn't want to become a spamming commenter, so I had to find some way round the bit about planting 5 comments in 5.

I admit my way may be regarded as cheating by some, but at least I gave myself some time to think about what I was going to say and where I said it. Thanks for dropping in.

@Carla - You had to leave so soon! Not even time for a biscuit and a cuppa. Next time - a bit more leisurely perhaps?

Anonymous said...

I was definitely not even thinking that you were cheating !
But it looks like this challenge was definitely becoming more a techy one, and was finally more impacted by tech issues not under the commenter control, than by your imagination to find a way to be a serial commenter ;-)

Blogger In Middle-earth said...

@Christophe - Yes, smart use of the tech is where a lot of this Challenge takes us. There is a lot to learn, even for me who has been in techland with computers for a long time - but I have not had much to do with blogs or the blogosphere till fairly recently.

Thanks for your support
Cheers