The Guide to Crazy Comment Personality Types "" Part 3

Well, this is it people. You’ve read Part 1 and Part 2 of our Crazy Comment Personality Guide. Although there is a heap more crazy on the Internet, this week we're going to wrap up our tour of the crazy comment personality types you will most likely face on your blog.

Hopefully you have learned through these articles how to identify these special people and deal with them. Feel free to use your knowledge to root them out and step all over their dreams.

** Warning – this article may contain humor **

What's with the warning?

Although I had assumed that it would go without saying that my articles contain a modicum of what you could call "the funny", it seems that it may be a tricky concept to understand.

Thus the warning.

Therefore, should my articles cause you to lose your grasp on sanity, or heaven forbid, make you giggle – I am deeply sorry. Their intent is simply to bring a fleeting bit of joy into your life as you struggle along in your freelance career.

And it's Friday for goodness sake! Have a little fun

Research Ronnie

The character Research Ronnie is not only here to tell you where you're wrong, but exactly how, when and why.

Research Ronnie spends his day huddled up behind dusty tomes scribbling furiously on scraps of paper. Like a Batman type beacon, if there is a fact that needed checking somewhere on the Internet, Research Ronnie is there!

Never play Trivial Pursuit with a Research Ronnie as you will most certainly be creamed. These people have spent a life time storing bizarre and useless facts in their head.

Trivia challenges and the Internet are their promised land.

How to deal with them:

A commenter has just pointed out that the quote you just attributed to Mark Twain was actually spoken by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke. You've just met yourself a Research Ronnie.

Well your first instinct will be to tell these commenters where to sit and how to twist, the reality is you probably will never win an argument with a Research Ronnie. They really have nothing better to do than to quaff double espressos all night while they madly pound away at the refresh button waiting for you to post another erroneous reply.

It's better to just let them be and learn a humiliating lesson in doing better fact checking in the future.

After a certain period of time, Research Ronnie will be alerted to yet another inaccuracy on the Internet, and with a twirl of his cape and a puff of smoke, he will be gone.

Lurker Lou

I wanted to call this commenter personality type Lurker Lucy Lui because I have a bit of a thing for her.

Don't you judge me!

Lurker Lou makes up the greatest portion of your commentors. These are the people that loyally read every one of your articles but never leave any trace behind. They don't post comments or get involved in the forums, they just come, read and leave.

How to deal with them:

While Lurker Lou is hard to get active,it is actually a good problem to have. After all, these people make up the majority of your audience and without them you wouldn't have much of a blog.

So how do you get Lurker Lou involved?

Sometimes it's a simple as asking an opinion question. Your best articles will always leave the door open for discussion. And like a trail of cookies left on your kitchen floor; Lurker Lou will find it hard to resist.

Also, make it easy to comment. A long sign up process with security measures that require the Rosetta Stone to translate make it unlikely that Lurker Lou will bother taking the time to post. People shouldn't have to type "umbilical bumpkin" just to make a comment.

As a bonus, it seems like once you get Lurker Lou talking, he's much more likely to talk again. You just have to give him sufficient reason to invest some time in commenting.