Greetings from the world of triiibes. I really like Carpenter's observation about strong narratives, especially the notion of a shared narrative that develops over time. It makes for an interesting goal for developing a blog. Darren Rowse is definitely a good example of a blogger with a strong narrative, and it's a narrative that seems to extend beyond his authoritative voice on professional blogging.

As for comments, I'm generally guilty of spending too much time on them. I tend to think through what I'm going to say and edit frequently in notepad before pasting into the comment box. Don't know if it makes my comments any better, but I do try to avoid being a comment spammer.

My comment on your piece in general here is if you want to breakout of the echo chamber and rise above it to have a bigger audience, it's a challenge. I mean you're focused on a niche not that many people care about in general (relatively speaking) and though Louis' is a remarkable story, even with all his growth on a page view basis his blog is teeny tiny.

It's very hard to differentiate yourself when there are dozens (or hundreds) doing the same thing. This doesn't mean it can't be done, but increases the level of difficult substantially. It's not always clear to me that most of the people gazing their navels on this topic really are interested, motivated or willing to do the work involved with rising above to stand out from the crowd. In fact, in most cases it seems clear they are not.

It's hard to stand out even if you are motivated and interested, but it's a lot harder when you're not. Many seem to wish to externalize this and make it a function of something other than themselves. I believe that's folly, but that's just my opinion. It's not knee-jerk reaction, but it is just an opinion nonetheless.

I had pretty much stopped commenting on any blogs with my opinions because although I had read the post, it seemed I was not getting the author's intentions most of the time. I am a fairly well educated person and I tend to pick up on things rather quickly, but I think my problem was reading too much too quickly. After enough embarrassment, I have slowed myself down and have forced myself to re-read any posts that I want to comment on, to make sure that my opinion is even related to what the author has written.

There are those who are just out there to spam the comments to add their links to a site or just to get their name to be recognized, but it's nice to see that you are also recognizing that there are those of us who are just moving way too fast for our own good.