The so-called 80/20 rule (80% of [whatever] comes from 20% of [whatever]), which I’d always associated with Vilfredo Pareto, seems to have been named by quality guru Joseph Juran (who died last March at the age of 103).
It’s a heuristic, not a law of physics, of course (80% of the people who insist otherwise are rounded-number lobbyists). Juran and Pareto were big on analysis. As Tom Gilbert said once, science observes, which is why Pareto charts make a lot of sense.
I’m not sure if I got onto this track-and-think path because I wanted pizza last night, or because of the comment-on-blogs challenge I found out about. I do think it can be valuable for people who read blogs to make comments — assuming the comments aren’t “get V!_ag Ra cheap!”
I think there’s value for me in paying attention to whether, where, and when I comment. I’m a couple of days behind, but then, that’s a fair description of my life. The activities for the first three days of May:
- Do a commenting self-audit. I will, this weekend, though I understand that today I’m going to be redoing my closet.
- Comment on a blog you’ve never commented on. I see I’ve done that three times in the past three days. (My “three clicks out” habit helps me here.)
- Sign up for a comment tracking service. I’m on CoComment, though I have to say that it sometimes seems to be more about comment than about tracking.
- I have the little gizmo that’s supposed to take me to “my conversations.” When I go there, as I just did, items appear somewhat randomly. The first in the list is March 24, the fifth is three hours ago, the tenth 36.
- If I click “my conversations,” the list changes to most-recent-first. Why? I don’t know.
To me, this is all about taking active part in various communities. I don’t think I need to comment for the sake of commenting (that’s what talk radio is for). I do think that by engaging with other people virtually, as I might if I met them at some event we were attending, helps me find out things, share what I know, and focus on whatever the big picture happens to be.
Potato photo by vladdythephotogeek / Paul Vladuchick.
What is your “three clicks out” habit? Have you written about that somewhere here before?
Do you subscribe to your feed for coComment, or just use it on that page? BTW, it might be showing your conversations in order of the most recent comment made on the thread, not when the thread started. Some conversations continue months after the original post, and coComment might bump those to the top of the list based on recent activity.
Christy, I called it “three links out” here. What it means: I read a post on your blog, and click a link (one). On the resulting blog, I follow another link (two). And often from that location, I go somewhere else (three).
So I’m three links out from where I started; that usually gets me well out of my accustomed haunts.
I appreciate your thoughts on what CoComment might be doing. Since I’m automatically logged in when I go there, I’m not sure what the difference is between what I see on arrival and what I see when I click “my conversations.” And, cranky though it seems, I’m not working that hard to figure it out.
Thanks for the clarification.
CoComment makes me cranky too, so I understand not wanting to put too much time into figuring it out. :)
I’m also feeling cranky about WordPress. I have two other blogs that I’ve upgraded to version 2.5; now the image uploader doesn’t work. I apparently have to find a 2.5 – compatible theme, and then test my various plugins in case they’re also incompatible.
I just haven’t had the heart to do that here yet.