Mathematical Musing

A comment Jenny made on her blog (babysunflower.blogspot.com) got me thinking about connections between posts and comments. It got me wondering, and so I spent a little time looking for patterns, and here's what I came up with:

There seem to be four main factors that impact the number of comments that a blog post gets. I've listed them in what I believe is the order of their level of impact.

First and foremost is traffic - that is how many people read the post.

Second is the length of the post. There seems to be an inverse relationship here. That is, as the length of the post increases, the number of comments it elicits decreases.

Third is content: what does the post say. Certain topics generate more interest and feedback than others. (this is a bit vaguer than I would like, but I'm still trying to quantify what makes a topic "buzzworthy")

Fourth is what I would term an active request for feedback. That is, if the post contains a question (either specific or open-ended) directly addressed to the reader, then it will typically generate more comments.

Now, there are certainly factors that impact commenting that are on the side of the reader (e.g. mood, speed of internet connection, time available, relationship with the "poster", and the commenter's own communication agenda) , but as these are generally out of the control of the blogger, I've chosen to omit them from my analysis.

I'll let you know if have any additional insights, or if I have to amend my theory.