It's interesting, but you have to be careful how you interpret the results. Are there more comments because sex was mentioned? Because the entry had no obvious point, and thus was easy to respond to with silliness? Because it was intriguing due to having no obvious point? Because silliness takes less effort than working out a reasoned, coherent response to something that actually matters? I've actually got a theory that the percieved importance/seriousness of a post has a strange correlation with the comments -- quizzes and surveys done by everyone get few comments, unless accompanied by amusing or intriguing comments. That brings them into the second category: items with low personal 'importance' but high individuality. These tend to get a decent number of replies of some sort. Then you get to medium-high personal importance, and the higher it gets, it seems like the fewer replies there are. My theory on this is that people can't make jokes, and it takes time and effort to craft a response that expresses what you want to say to the person, something that doesn't seem to trivialize things. If you get to =severe= personal importance -- a death in the immediate family, loss of a serious relationship, serious consideration of suicide, etc. -- then the comments go up again, because people either know an appropriate way to reply (all you can really do is show sympathy, after all) or feel that making a reply may have a real and immediate influence on the situation.
Rough theory I hadn't formulated in words before, but there it is. Leaves some things out... for example, I've noticed that if I specifically ask for advice or suggestions without making a fill-in poll, I will be very unlikely to get any replies that are actually advice or suggestions. In a way, that fits with category 3, but since it could certainly have a major influence on the situation...
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2003-05-09 08:23 pm (UTC)Rough theory I hadn't formulated in words before, but there it is. Leaves some things out... for example, I've noticed that if I specifically ask for advice or suggestions without making a fill-in poll, I will be very unlikely to get any replies that are actually advice or suggestions. In a way, that fits with category 3, but since it could certainly have a major influence on the situation...
Anyway. I'm working on it. ;)