Edited to add: Please don’t take offense if you do one of the things I mentioned I don’t like. Maybe I should have ranked these from worst to not-that-bad. 🙂 I think things like profanity or spam comments are pretty universally disliked, but some of these other things are just matters of personal preferences. If I like chocolate and you don’t, I am not offended: if you like red and I like pink, we can still get along. Some of these are just that — personal preferences. But that’s what the meme was asking for: what we liked and didn’t like and why.

I saw at Quilly‘s that Nessa has begun a meme about blogging etiquette. The basic idea is to:

On your own blog do a post listing 5 things you like about blogs, 5 things you don’t like and 5 things you do blogging that you think are cool and why you do them. Try to give the reasons why, too, so people understand your way of thinking.

However, these aren’t ironclad rules and you can feel free to list more or less as desired.

Things I like about blogs:

1. Connection. I was amazed when people first began commenting on my blog and left genuine comments, and then showed genuine care, even praying me through some difficult situations.

2. Stimulation. Many blogs stimulate me imaginatively, creatively, intellectually, spiritually.

3. Fun.

4. Good writing. Most of us just write as things come to mind, and that’s fine, but there are a few who express themselves really well, whose writing style I like as much as their content.

Things I don’t like:

1. White or light words on dark backgrounds. They are hard on the eyes and make me see the “negative” (as in reverse image, not as in not positive) for a while.

2. When an everyday average friendly blog goes commercial. I know a lot of people do ads to support the cost of the blog, if they are paying for their own domain, or to justify the time spent, etc, and I am not talking about that.  But there are a few who, once they start to go that route, become more business than blog. There are two specifically (and no, I am not going to link to them) who used to be regular commenters here, and I am not even on their radar any more, even though I still commented there for a long time (I rarely do any more). But it is not just about return comments: it’s that the whole tone of their blog changed.

3. Long posts not broken up into paragraphs. I think probably most prefer short posts to long ones, but I don’t mind long ones occasionally if the subject and writing are good. But one long paragraph that could be broken up into smaller sections should be.

4. Nudity or s*xual (disguised not because I am prudish, but to avoid the wrong kind of Internet searches) jokes. If I come across anything like that on a blog, I shut it down immediately.

5. When a site gets stuck or is very slow in loading, especially when the culprit is ad-related.

6. When I comment on someone’s blog and they start sending me unsolicited e-mails urging me to come read their next post, especially when they don’t ever visit my blog. I keep up with blogs I read regularly via Google Reader. Self-promotional e-mails really irritate me. Again — I feel I need to keep balancing things out — I don’t mind an occasional thing like that. For instance, Quilly sends out an e-mail when her Punny Monday posts are ready, and that’s fine — sometimes it doesn’t show up in Google Reader for a while, sometimes she gives a bit of background, sometimes I’ve forgotten, etc.  Or e-mails that are just a personal note or a continuation of a discussion — those are all fine.

7. When a blog is overly cluttered. I don’t mind sidebars, but a great lot of distracting things is…distracting. Things that move or flash, in particular, usually lessen the likelihood that I’ll spend much time there.

8. When a blog doesn’t have a search button. It’s very tedious trying to look through the archives for a post you read previously (especially if you can’t remember when you saw it) without some kind of search function.

9. I dislike the format I’m starting to see around now where blog posts show up side by side instead of being in a list form down the page. Here is an example — this is from a site I love and I don’t mean to “slam” them, but this format is so busy it’s off-putting to me. But this is a site I usually read via a feed reader and only comment on specific posts occasionally, so I don’t run into it much. In fact, I was really surprised to go to the main page and see it like that, but if it had been my first visit I probably would not have gone back.

10. When the blog posts are set up on feed readers to only show part of the post, making me have to click over to see the whole thing. A couple are set up to only show the title of the post, and honestly, I don’t always click over to those every day. There are some blogs that I click over to comment on almost every post anyway, but it just bugs me to have to for every post. And it especially bugs me if the purpose for setting it up that way is ad-related: some time back one blogger did share that she gets “credit” for how many people read her blog by how many actually click over, but she didn’t get credit for those who read via rss feeds, and that was why she only put partial posts or “teasers” in the rss feed. As I said elsewhere, I do understand why some place ads, but I don’t like to be manipulated or “used.”

10. These are more about comments than blogging, but comments are in integral part of blogging (otherwise what you have is an online journal):

• “Empty” comments that just say, “Good answers” and don’t really respond to anything said in the post.
• Self-promotion in comments with multiple links back to the commentor’s blog. Just the link back that occurs when you fill out the info. when you comment is sufficient. (BTW, you should know that the Askimet spam blocker which WordPress uses auotomatically sends anything with more than two links to the spam queue.) There are exceptions, like when someone wants to share thoughts on the same subject in a previous post of theirs and they’re sharing the link.
• Businesses who leave comments linking back to their business site. I am not here to provide free advertising for you.
• Spam comments with links back to s*xual sites, pharmaceutical sites, etc.
• When you repeatedly comment on someone’s blog but they never respond. Among the regulars with whom I interact, we don’t all comment on every post every day, and that’s fine. But some people never do.
• The Open ID comment format. When I start to type in my url, a prompt comes up with my whole url, but if I click on the prompt, only what I had typed at the time shows up, so I have to go back and type the whole thing. Plus a good bit of the time, after I type in my url, I get a window that there’s an error, and I have to try it at least twice, sometimes more often, before it accepts my comment.
• Blogger blogs that only accept comments from other Blogger blogs. I can understand not wanting to leave the “Anonymous” option open, but I don’t know if they realize that cuts them off from bloggers with other hosts. I set up a Blogger blog linking back to my main site just so I could comment on those blogs, but it bugs me that I had to do that.

Things I am on the fence about (Yes, I made up this category):

1. Music that plays automatically on blogs. Normally I don’t like it, especially if it is loud, rockish, or jarring. Usually I don’t even have music playing in my home while I am blogging: my brain can’t seem to handle both at once (though I do like playing music if I am cleaning, cooking, etc.). So I usually turn off any music or hit the mute button (and one pet peeve is when the music widget is hard to find and therefore hard to turn off.) However, a few times I have found music I really liked and even ordered through hearing it on someone’s blog.

2. Awards. I do love when someone has thought of me and tagged me. But I feel awkward tagging some people and leaving others out, and the generic “All of you take this award” seems to take some of the meaning out of it. I put all my awards on a page in my sidebar with a thank-you to the giver,  but I don’t often follow the “rules” for them any more.

3. When I comment on someone’s blog, if they are going to respond, my preference would be that they visit my blog. I don’t mind an e-mail in response too much (and some responses call for that rather than a public response, and occasionally a friendly discussion will ensue via e-mail — that’s fine), but there are a few bloggers who never “return visit” someone who comments or who always respond via e-mail without ever visiting their visitors. Maybe I am wrong, but I seemed to pick up on the idea in early blogging days that it was common courtesy to try to return visit someone who commented on your blog. It’s not that I comment just to get visited — but when I repeatedly comment and that person never responds, I feel awkward and eventually stop. Then again, some people answer within their own comments, and that works really well for some, and if I know they do that I often check back after I have commented. But I have over 130 blogs in Google Reader. They don’t all post every day (I’d never be able to keep up with that many if they did), but I have a hard time some days keeping up with all the posts, much less making a return visit back to each one I have commented on.

4. I can understand the idea of having multiple blogs: I’ve thought about it myself. For instance, some of my readers are only interested in posts relating to books, and I’ve often thought of making a separate book blog. But I really don’t like visiting a blog that has frequent reminders to “Come see my post over here.” And when one blog I like splits into two or more, it makes it that much harder to keep up. I end up just reading the main blog I started with. It does work well for some people, but generally I prefer everything in one place.

5. I like devotional blogs that share thoughts from God’s Word. (Well…I like good ones, not ranting ones.) But I like them better if they show some aspect of the person’s whole personality — something funny here, something about the family there, etc. Getting some idea of the whole person makes me appreciate more what they have to say. Just a straight devotional blog can come across as just looking for an audience to preach to. That’s not necessarily wrong…just personal preference. I guess I like devotional posts that are more like sharing over a cup of coffee than a sermon outline, though I have done my share of outlines.

Things I do on my own blog:

1. I try to visit every one who comments on my blog at least once. I may miss some or not have time some days, but I try.

2. I like to change at least the picture header with the seasons. I used to change themes, but I like the features on this one the best.

3. I like to share links to other interesting things I’ve read.

4. I have a mixture of serious, devotional thoughts, fun or interesting things, “life in general” posts — a hodgepodge. But a good reflection of who I am, I think.

Wow — I’m sorry this got so long! I know that “long posts” are going to be on some people’s lists. But I guess once I got started, I wanted to get everything off my chest. I wrote most of this last night, and when I saw how long it was, decided to let it sit overnight and then come back and cut it down — but I ended up adding more, so I’d better stop!

I think some of these things would likely be on everyone’s lists, but others we would have different opinions on. That’s fine: we can disagree and still be friends. 🙂

Edited to add: Please don’t take offense if you do one of the things I mentioned I don’t like. Maybe I should have ranked these from worst to not-that-bad. 🙂 I think things like profanity or spam comments are pretty universally disliked, but some of these other things are just matters of personal preferences. If I like chocolate and you don’t, I am not offended: if you like red and I like pink, we can still get along. Some of these are just that — personal preferences. But that’s what the meme was asking for: what we liked and didn’t like and why.