Criticism

Chaim pointed to this excellent post at TV101 entitled Why I Hate the Haters, which discusses among other things the different types of commenters that exist on blogs. I think that most of the people on this blog generally fall into the first category

(1) The Genuinely Helpful Contributor (estimated 50% of the population) These are the normal every day people that express their opinions sanely and organically. If they disagree with something you say, they usually do so politely.

while I'd guess that the blogs I got sick of the were the ones that had the constant negativity of

The CRITIC (estimated 25% of the population) ...the CRITIC needs to justify his existence in this world by looking and acting intelligent. Since actually being intelligent is hard to do ... the easiest path is to just criticize everything and hope that nobody realizes that the angry internet emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

Negativity masquerades as intelligence because it implies that the speaker of that negativity sees something that the average person doesn't.

I don't think it's limited to commenters; I think a lot of this stems from the tone of the blog itself, though obviously not completely. It's why I think a lot of people enjoy this blog (or at least, I like to think so :) ) and why others are perhaps more "popular" but less "liked". Anyway, in the long run, I'd rather be catering to that rational 50% (which I actually think is higher, closer to 70%) than constantly giving in to the lunatic 5 or constantly critical 25.

It's a really interesting and well-written post, so check it out.

Elsewhere, JBM tells us that if you want your Zomick's meltaway, you'll need to get it from a store other than Zomick's - they're only doing factory baking and closing the store.