poll #7 or so! -please take the time to answer; I've very interested in your response.

[timepiececlock]

[Poll #208547]

My answers: I usually feel that a statement comment does not require a reply, but a question is a deliberate request for a reply. I do feel slightly miffed if I ask a question of someone I know on LJ (as opposed to a stranger's journal I'm visiting for the first time), and they don't respond at all. Many times I forget that I commented on something until they reply (like stakebait says she does), but most of the time if I ask a question and they don't resond, even to say that they have no answer they want to/ can share with me, I think it's a little bit rude. Not toward it would make me mad or anything, but it's kinda frustrating. In this I don't really distinguish between people I only sometimes converse with and people I frequently converse with-- to me the issue is the same for both.

Not personal questions really, because if they don't answer than a *I* haven't really lost out on anything. But if the question is related to the content of the post itself, that deserves a response. Or technical questions, where you ask, "That thing you did on your LJ is so cool, could you tell me what that feature is or how I can use it, or where I can find out how to use it?" irritate me if I don't get some kind of response. Note-- "Go away" or "Look it up yourself" DO constitute valid responses. It's the acknowledgement, or lack thereof, which a question deserves, not the answer itself.

I guess some part of my upbringing has imprinted on me that ignoring statments is acceptable, but ignoring questions is rude. Maybe there's a difference in importance, or effort, or earnestness or something on the part of the questioner. An active desire to start a conversation, versus a passive desire. I don't know quite how to articulate it.

I think it's to be expected that people you've never conversed with before have a right to ignore you. But if it's someone you've had two or three conversations with, that establishes a kind of willingness toward future conversation (unless the conversation ended badly or something.) Not a requirement, but an... openness. And in that case, I think some response of some type should be given when a direct question is asked of you, if it's reasonably possible for you to respond. If the question has already been answered in the comments or post, then that's enough and the questioner should be able to pick up that on their own.

None of these are personal rules, and no one should ever feel pressured to answer what they don't want to, or reply to what they don't want to. It's just sort of examining how I've learned to react to things like this. I feel like a question deserves a response or some form of acknowledgement, while a comment is only if you feel like it.

I suppose it would be different if all the comments you ever got were questions. That rarely happens to me though.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ri/]

Hello?! I answered more than question 3, actually at first I answered them all except for #3 because I forgot and when I submitted it said, "you may not see this poll" or something like that. Then I saw I didn't answer #3, which I then did, and then that was the only question posted in the results. And I can't change anything now. Argh!

Anyway, with question #1, I also say, "Only if I regularly converse with them and expect an answer".
With question three, I say, "It'd bother me if it was a question that I asked to find out whether they understood me or not. If it was a personal question about them, I'd be okay with it (though depending on the question, I might be slightly worried of having offended them or something).
Question #4: "If some stranger says, 'Nice photo you got there. This gives me an idea, are you interested in hearing it?' "

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry LJ is being mean to you! Gomen nasai!

Thanks for answering the questions, though.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't take this stuff too personally because of the fact that I view LJ primarily as a journaling community, rather than a conversation community. Sometimes I fall behind on responding to comments, just because my life is busy (or I'm depressed, which is more frequent), and that's about me, not about the random person I've never met who asked me a random question.

In the best of all possible worlds, everyone would be polite in every situation ... or wait ... maybe that would be fascism. But, anyway, what I was saying is that I try to respond to all comments on which I actually have interesting thoughts to add, whether the comments are questions or statements.

A lot of the "questions" left in comments on my own journal are actually statements in disguise. "Have you ever tried such-and-such random thing as a way to treat your headaches?" ... that sort of thing. I don't feel obliged to answer those types of questions.

So, I guess, for me, it depends on the question ... but I mostly just don't get offended if I ask something and the person never responds. I have no idea what's going on with them at that time, so I'm not going to lay claim to their attention. I'm reading their journal voluntarily and at their invitation, but they are under no obligation to converse with me if they don't want to.

Just my two cents. Long enough to perhaps be four cents. :)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't take this stuff too personally because of the fact that I view LJ primarily as a journaling community, rather than a conversation community.

I view it as both equally, I think.

A lot of the "questions" left in comments on my own journal are actually statements in disguise. "Have you ever tried such-and-such random thing as a way to treat your headaches?" ... that sort of thing. I don't feel obliged to answer those types of questions.

I can see that.


... but I mostly just don't get offended if I ask something and the person never responds.

Offended is too strong a word for me, I think. I'm talking more about very mild annoyance than "offence," which to me holds a much stronger connotation, akin to "insult." Manners and etiquette are usually on the small scale of importance, whereas it takes serious content to "offend." There's very little on LJ that insults me, or seriously offends me personally. I'm sure there must be something that could, but not that I can think of right now. And if I do get annoyed that someone never answered me, it's not usually an annoyance about me, as in "they're supposed to answer me, because I deserve it!" so much as wondering if they always ignore questions, and being frustrated at the lack of progress/knowledge that I was hoping to get answered.

As I said in the post, it's not something I could get actively upset over. It's just a matter of expectation and disappointment, mostly based on how I expect myself to behave had someone asked _me_ something. Of course, expectations of behavior are not universal-- but then again, the only system b

cut off my last line...

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

the only system by which we ever judge anyone is the ways in which we were taught. That's all we have to compare to. And everybody judges other people in that way, consciously or unconsciously.

Re: cut off my last line...

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

I agree, except that I believe we do have the ability to change and grow through our experiences, so that we create new systems for analyzing the world. I don't think that I judge people in the same way I did 20 years ago, for example. I don't like the system I was taught as a child, and so I taught myself different.

But I do agree with your basic point, which (if I understand it correctly) is one of subjectivity.

Re: cut off my last line...

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

yeah, that was it, mostly.