Since the website version of Must Read Alaska launched in May of 2016, this editor has approved over 200,000 comments. That is nearly 28,600 comments approved per year. Through storms, earthquakes, late-night flights, and early-morning meetings, the first thing I do each morning is approve the latest batch of comments.
Here’s the 200,000th comment, made on the column by Suzanne Downing titled, “Hey Bud, real marketers of genius don’t hate their customers.”
The 200,000th comment came from someone whose handle is “Meadow.” He or she wrote:
“Of all the problems in the world, this is what democrats are concerned about, turning boys into girls and girls into boys. Mean while the rest of the world wants to destroy us. We are doomed with them in charge. I thank people like Marjorie Taylor Green for calling them what they are, pedofiles and perverts. Just look at our little girl hair sniffing excuse of a president we have. We are living in a psychotic bizarro world.” There have been 33 other comments on that column.
Since that 200th comment, another 550 have been approved and posted.
With such a robust conversation, the decisions about what is civilized enough to publish and what is not is made pretty quickly. During the seven-year period, 1,756 comments we’re not approved. Usually it was because of language or unintelligibility, or perhaps it was someone trolling the site to be abusive to readers.
This author has also written 1,200 comments in response to comments over the seven-year period, usually to clarify a point for a reader or answer a question, or even thank someone for pointing out a typographical error.
(I try to approve comments at least five times a day. Thanks to everyone for their patience with this one-person endeavor.)
Spam folder: Sometimes a perfectly good comment ends up in the spam folder, and occasionally I will go through that folder to look for lost comments, but most of what is in there is just spam. More than 53,000 spam comments have gone into that folder over the years.
Also, as of April 17, 2023, 9,955 stories and columns have been posted on this website, an average of four per day.
This week also marks the eight-year anniversary of the Must Read Alaska newsletter, now going out to 35,500 people three times a week. You can subscribe here.
Thank you to all the commenters. I appreciate the feedback and tremendously enjoy the Must Read Alaska community of commenters. Keep ’em coming!
And thank you to all the supporters of this project to balance out the left-leaning media narrative in Alaska. You are the wind beneath my wings.
~ Suzanne Downing
