I just noticed today that this blog is 100 posts old (yesterday’s post was the 100th). I won’t do any navel-gazing the way I did last time I marked a milepost when the blog was a month old, but I do have some minor housekeeping matters to mention, and I might as well use this opportunity.
First of all, you might have noticed that I changed the “Marginalia” section of the sidebar so that it now contains mini-blogposts instead of Twitter updates. I plan to use it to post short items that don’t merit a full post, or to post links to things I find interesting or noteworthy around the web. While they act like regular blog posts in most ways, those mini-posts do not appear in the RSS feed for the main blog, so if anyone reads this blog through an RSS reader and wants to get the Marginalia posts too, then you have to subscribe to the Marginalia feed separately (I like this feature, because it allows Fragmentary Evidence’s most devoted readers to collect all the evidence that they want, while more casual readers can opt to get only the main blog feed, which will be slightly more fragmentary but still have all the substantive posts).
For now, I have both Marginalia and my Twitter feed on the sidebar. I like the somewhat minimalist aesthetic here, so I may end up losing the Twitter feed at some point, but I plan to keep them both for now and see how that works out. The main reason I changed Marginalia is that I wanted people to be able to leave comments on those items the same way they can leave comments on regular posts, without having to sign up for Twitter. Now all you have to do to comment on a Marginalia mini-post is to click on the mini-headline and enter a comment as you would on any other of my posts.
Speaking of comments, that brings me to the second item on my agenda: I love to get comments! It’s always nice to know that people are reading, and that I wrote (or photographed) something that they found interesting enough to respond to, but also, I’ve been happily surprised to see that the comment thread on a post will often be much more interesting than the post itself. I seem to have a few new readers in recent weeks thanks in large part to links from two great Oakland blogs, A Better Oakland and Living in the O, so I want to state for the record that I welcome comments, especially when people disagree with me. As an anti-spam measure, the first comment someone makes usually needs to be approved by me, but I have never yet deleted a comment from a real person (as opposed to an automated spammer), and after someone’s first comment is approved, then subsequent comments should appear instantly. Unless a comment is extremely offensive or potentially libelous, I am almost certain to allow it to stand, even if you are telling me that my post is stupid and wrong six ways to Sunday.
I know that some bloggers either don’t accept comments, or enjoy getting in flame wars with those who disagree with them. That isn’t me: I like a good debate, and I generally don’t take things personally. Indeed, I view some of my posts more as hypotheses than as declarations, and the comments I get are one way of testing a hypothesis. (Which fiction writer said something like, “I write to find out what I know?” I think that applies to blogging as well as to fiction.) So if you ever feel any inclination to leave a comment, I encourage you to do so, no matter how frivolous or argumentative or whatever. Alternatively, if you want to say something privately, I welcome messages via email or Twitter, both of which can be found in the sidebar.
And lastly, thanks for reading!
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