Gosh, I must just be getting cranky. I didn’t have anything for yesterday’s challenge and now I don’t want to complete today’s (or even tomorrow’s as written). It’s gonna be a long remainder of the month at this rate.

Today, we’re supposed to highlight a favorite comment, but I don’t want to do that, for the very same reason I didn’t want to pick a favorite commenter: I don’t want to discourage anyone who’s inclined or even tempted to leave a comment here. And I don’t want to tell you what makes a good comment (which is tomorrow’s challenge), lest it shape the way you leave comments.

Almost any comment left on this blog is a good comment in my book. I’m not about to start making qualitative judgments based on some set of arbitrary criteria that I conjure for the purpose of this challenge. I just appreciate that you take the time to say whatever’s on your mind. I try to respond in kind.

How quickly I fall behind. I’m not sure what to do with yesterday’s challenge. The idea is to make a recommendation to another blog or blog post in the comments. The activity description isn’t clear as to whether I’m supposed to make that recommendation in my comments or someone else’s.

I’m not sure it matters. I don’t have any meaningful recommendations to make and feel a bit disingenuous making a recommendation for the purpose of completing a challenge. So I’m gonna leave this alone for the moment and assume that the right moment to make a meaningful suggestion will present itself. I’ll hope that’s still in keeping with the spirit of the challenge.

This was another easy one, so I thought I’d bang it out and actually get a jump on tomorrow. The day 20 challenge is to go to one of your regular reads and follow a link from there to another blog. Repeat twice until you are on a totally foreign-to-you blog and comment on a post there.

To ensure that I didn’t end up in library land, I started with Chris Brogan’s Rockstars, which led me to socialTNT. From there, I found Shoestring Branding, from whose blogroll I found my final destination, Escape from Cubicle Nation. I chose to comment on a post called Help Me, Help You, where the author discusses recognizing opportunities to get help from others and seizing them.

And so take that, Comment Challenge! Until we meet again…

Would you believe it? Here I am on the fourth post of the evening, about to catch up on this here challenge. And it’s an easy day, because I’ve already been responding to comments on this blog, as today’s task requires. I’ve been trying to do this as religiously as I can.

There have been challenges. The Twitter question generated so many comments so quickly that I was overwhelmed before I even began. I ended up leaving a generic thanks for commenting comment, which is embarrassingly lame. Yet I can’t muster up the strength to tackle personal responses to 30 comments, most of which are variations on a theme (albeit interesting and notable variations). Can I declare comment bankruptcy?

One side effect of this challenge is that I’m pummeling you, my dearest reader, with posts that are not “on topic.” I wonder what your thoughts are on that. Is this a totally self-indulgent exercise? Is the quantity and frequency of posting driving you crazy? Do you wish I’d not sink all my energy into this challenge, so that I’d have some energy for writing more topical posts? Regardless of your perspective, I’m so dangerously close to being only a day behind, I’m plodding onward.

The day 18 challenge involves further analysis of commenting patterns on your blog. Because I’ve lost my entire comment history from the Movable Type days, I have a pretty limited set of posts from which to draw data.

* Which of your posts have generated the most comments?

Well, the one where I went fishing for comments on Twitter received 30 comments.

The launch of video commenting drew 21 comments.

My Thoughts on Managing My Social Network post garnered 18 comments.

The big winner though is my Stepping Into Marketing post, which generated 38 comments.

* Which has generated the best conversation? (The last question is about quantity; this one is about quality.)

I think the marketing post clearly had the most mojo and generated the best conversation between commenters. One of the commenters took the conversation over to his blog, where I continued the discussion with him at considerable length. The video commenting also introduced some nice back and forth between commenters, which I enjoyed immensely.

As an aside, if you haven’t tried out the Seesmic video commenting plugin on this blog and have the technology to do so, please do give it a go. So much fun.

* Are there any patterns to the commenting on your own blog? Do certain types of posts generate more comments than others?

I think the posts where I ask/ponder the types of questions that people are already asking themselves and each other draw the best comments. How do we manage our social networks? Why do I use Twitter so fervently?

But really, it’s just plain hard to predict what people will talk about, as Walt Crawford observed during the first comment audit. For example, only two people commented on my comments on librarian rock-stardom, but Walt picked it up for the latest Cites and Insights. Never know who will respond to something you’ve written. But you gotta put it out there and see what sticks.

* If you do see a pattern or commonality between posts that generate good comments, what can you do to increase those qualities in other posts?

I don’t believe that the primary purpose of this blog is to generate comments, so I’m not sure that I want to bring that mentality to every post I write. Sometimes I just want to share.

Only two days behind now! It’s time for a comment spree. Five comments in five minutes.

I’m started by exploring blogs and podcasts of other registrants to Podcamp Ohio, for which I recently registered. (My first podcamp. So excited!)

One of the registrants is co-founder of Social Media Club Louisville, which I had no idea existed. So comment 1 is on the SMC Louisville blog. I also tried to comment here at another Louisvillian podcamper’s blog, but something is broken in the commenting, so I sent the author an email instead. I’m counting it.

I wanted to comment on this blog, but the author explicitly said “the best way to interact with me for now is on Twitter.” I commented anyway.

I then switched gears and commented on a submission for this week’s Uncontrolled Vocabulary. And finally, I commented on a post related to an attempted one-off revival of the Carnival of the Infosciences.

This took much, much longer than five minutes. It took hours. I’m not cut out for speed commenting. It doesn’t suit me in any fashion. Now I know.

So here it is, the 19th day of the month, and I’m all the way back on Day 15’s challenge. Pathetic. But not altogether surprising. Today, I’m supposed to present awards to the fantastic commenters on my blog.

Here’s the thing: If you comment on this blog (in a non-spammy way), you’re fantastic. All award-winners in my book. I don’t think there’s any one person who has risen above the others to be the premier commenter on this blog. I’m also hesitant to commit errors of omission by not including people in a list of best commenters. I want you all to know that every single comment, no matter how long or short, is valued by this blog’s author.

And so it gives me great pleasure to award this shiny medal to everyone who’s ever left a non-spammy comment on this blog. Thank you for being part of the Open Stacks community.

Day 16 of this challenge was meant to be a day of rest and catching up, an opportunity I meant to take advantage of and failed.

In an attempt to catch up a bit, let’s tackle the next challenge. The task is simple. Ask a compelling question and let you, the reader, comment and thus have the compelling story be told in the comments and not in the post itself.

Here’s my question(s): Those of you who use Twitter, what do you think makes it so compelling and sticky (i.e., challenging to walk away from)? Those of you who don’t use Twitter, have you tried it and walked away or are you avoiding it altogether? Either way, why?

I know a number of you have answered this question in one context or another, but I’d like to see a nice long list of responses that might help someone looking at Twitter for the first time see many sides of the Twitter discussion. Give me three words. Or give me three paragraphs. Fire away.

As happens with so many endeavors in my life, my initial zest and enthusiasm for the comment challenge has waned somewhat. It’s not that I’m not still interested, just that I’m tired and blogging on a daily basis is not my MO. This particular challenge asks me to elevate a discussion that’s taking place in my comments to the next level by turning it into a post.

I was fairly disinclined to complete this task for what I thought was a pretty obvious reason: If I’d thought a comment or set of comments was worth a new blog post, I’d have already written one. But in the spirit of participation, I do want to touch on one point that was raised by multiple people in my post on Stepping into Marketing.

What I learned is that I’m being pretty fast and loose with my use of the word marketing. Stephen Kellat points out, in espousing the need for data and demographic info, that “Marketing is okay, I suppose, if seen merely as a synonym for promotion.” Tim Keneipp, who begins his thoughts in the comments, but ultimately takes the conversation over to his blog, had this to say: “I think what Greg and some of the others are really talking about is librarians becoming active public relations ambassadors and not really marketing.” If I remember correctly, Tim has a marketing background, so he certainly would know better than I would. The back and forth between him and me on his blog post is worth reading.

Of course, I’ve since spent a little time digging into the term marketing and getting a better grip on the broader processes that the term indicates. I’m not so sure that I won’t still be using it as my catch-all term for activities that, for example, are geared toward elevating the presence and position of librarians within the context of social media. But at least I’ll now be better aware of my bastardization of the term.

What I want to stress though is my awareness that I have no idea what I’m talking about. My thoughts on marketing, promotion, public relations, etc., are nascent at best. That’s why I toss them out here, bandy them about with y’all and see what sticks. Your comments are profoundly helpful in forcing me to better articulate my ideas and wrap my head around things. So keep challenging me. (I welcome agreement too!)