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 Comments _are they a good thing


  • gordon the gopher
    Feb 19 10:53 AM 2007
    Reply
    In reading through the comments I am struck by a number of points.
    Some readers show an amazing depth of understanding and sensitivity in what they write.
    Some readers show a complete lack of sensitivity and add comments that are like shouting in a library. Often irrelevant, often coarse and often irritating.
    Some readers ask questions of varying degrees of difficulty about what they have read.
    Some readers express their thanks for the chance to read a long lost favourite or for a new poem that has struck a chord within them.
    Some readers just hastily scribble an irrelevant message that has only an ephemeral value to anyone other than themselves.

    Since the introduction of the chatterbox feature there is scope for the inane comment and temporary comment that have, at best, only a short lived value and should be expunged from the system.

    That leaves the comment boxes as a long term record of visitors interpretations of what they read here. This makes the comments an integral and useful part of the site.

    Those are my thoughts but I wonder how many other readers agree?



  • rufina caraid
    February 26, 2007
    Reply
    Over the past 5 years we have been plagued with spammers advertising everything from sex to drugs, gambling to a degree of total frustration, so many inane comments, poems being used as a chat room, reverence to a dead poet - I speak of 'Tupac' here, where there is no reference to any understanding of his poetry but a reverence to the man himself.

    All that aside most of the comments received are of a viable nature and in my own case I have learned so much from reading such educational, interesting comments seeing the poem from another perspective which I find fascinating.

    I have laughed, groaned and cried reading other people's thought and observations, felt the thrill of a person finding a long lost poem especially if I had the pleasure of adding it to our site.

    I believe comments to be a natural part of Oldpoetry and as time rolls on it's interesting to see the views of todays' readers compared to those of perhaps 2002.
    I agree Jim that comments are nearly as important as the poems themselves and it is the ability to make comment that bring people back to read more.

    My 2 bob's worth

    Von
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