Outside the Beltway

Missing Commenters Redux

A mystery within a mystery . . .

James Joyner
9

Comments

My posting from early yesterday morning, “Where Have All the Commenters Gone?” has drawn a long and interesting discussion.

As noted at the bottom of the original posting, I added a considerable number of names as the day went on and I’ve added a few more since. Long-timers may want to scan it again and look at the boldface names to see if they remember those guys.

As I was working through it, I noticed a coincidence perhaps too strong to be just a coincidence:

We lost four long-timers in a short span in 2017:

  • “Stonetools” posted at least 6,725 times between 2011/05/22 and 2017/01/01.
  • “legion” posted at least 2,629 times between 2009/01/01 and 2017/06/23.
  • “PD Shaw” posted 6,358 times between 2006/08/01 and 2017/06/27.
  • “anjin-san” commented 5,415 times under one email, 1,090 under another, and a handful more under others starting 2004/08/09 and made his most recent appearance on 2017/06/29.

I’m baffled as to what happened that one week in June!

Scanning the June 2017 archives, which are in reverse chronological order, nothing jumps out at me. Unless there’s a glitch in the way they’re aggregated, it looks like an incredibly light posting period. I personally was away on vacation with the girls during the latter part of June.

Categories

,

Tags

9 responses to “Missing Commenters Redux”

  1. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    You have listed Stonetools’ most recent post as January 1, 2017 (2017/01/01).
    Typo?

  2. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    “anjin-san” commented 5,415 times under one email, 1,090 under another, and a handful more under others starting 2004/08/09 and made his most recent appearance on 2017/06/29.

    Interesting. I do remember ‘anjin-san’ because ‘he’ was apparently from the same general locale that I am from, and where ‘Michael Reynolds’ was commenting from for a while. Sometimes life happens and you’re called away so to speak.

    One of my daughters periodically takes a sabbatical, she goes off the grid for a few months, minimizes her social media involvement. She feels that the immediacy of these platforms, and the often hypercritical content of comments, creates some stress and anxiety.

    by the way … I do appreciate your commentary here James, as well of the efforts of Doug and Steven.

  3. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @Mister Bluster: No, that’s the most recent one I found. But four long-timers in the span of a few months—three of them in one week!—seemed odd.

  4. Mister Bluster Avatar
    Mister Bluster

    I get it.
    Pardon my confusion.
    Maybe this fellow could help us out.

  5. Teve Avatar
    Teve

    Maybe they all John Galted and we are the poor dumb parasite saps doomed to die in an imminent economic collapse.

  6. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    Janis Gore disappeared, too.

  7. mattbernius Avatar
    mattbernius

    I know PD Shaw comments over at The Ordinary Times (there is no mistaking that “Amazing Screw On Head” Lincoln avatar). I keep hoping he will pop into one of these two threads to share his decision to stop commenting here (though I suspect I already know the answer to that).

    Still it would be interesting to know if any of those folks are still reading OTB.

  8. An Interested Party Avatar
    An Interested Party

    @mattbernius: If I recall correctly, for a period before he disappeared, he seemed to be frustrated with many of the responses directed towards his comments…

  9. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    @CSK: Yup. Janis Gore commented at least 1,649 times between 2003/05/01 and 2017/07/21. She had stopped blogging in 2012 but there were two blank posts at her site in September 2014.

Latest Posts