Monday, March 12, 2012

Things That Annoy Me on Blog Sites

So I regularly hang out at my favorite freelance writing blogs before writing my own blog posts--just to get a blogging mindset going and see what kinds of conversations are out there. There are so many blogs out there that I love, but sometimes I find myself getting annoyed while I do this--especially when venturing out of my trusted blog circle. Here are a few things that have me clicking the "back" button.

Anything that interrupts my reading. I tend to get annoyed when I head over to a blog, see a headline that looks fascinating, start reading--and an application pops up asking me to sign up for a subscription, fill out a survey, or something else. I find this pushy and aggressive and it really puts me off. I'm there to read--not follow the website owner's agenda. Leave me alone--if I want to sign up for a subscription, I'll let you know.

When it's difficult to find my way around. If I can't find your old posts, can't search topics, or can't find your blogroll--I grumble. I don't think every blogger has to have a super-fancy blog design--some of my favorite blogs are either on Blogger or are still very bare-bones. But I hate to look for things. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I probably won't come back.

Slow load times. Yeah, my Internet connection isn't noticeably slow--but I will never be one of those people who has the cutting edge technology and the up-to-the-minute browser. I get put off when a site is trying to do so much that it takes forever for things to load--video ads are the worst for this.

Aggression and snarkiness. I hate conflict. I'd just rather everyone be nice and treat each other well, even when they disagree. I understand that bloggers want to allow their readers to have their say--even if that say veers into snark territory--as long as it's not beyond the pale. But If I check out the comments section and there are lots of people spreading the meanness around, chances are I'll never comment myself.

What are your blogging pet peeves?

3 comments:

Lori said...

I'm with you on all of the above. I cannot stand a slow load time, and I've found a lot of Wordpress sites do take forever, probably because of those nifty plugins we actually like.

Cannot STAND popups or anything that follows me down the page, like those goofy Twitter/LinkedIn/StumbleUpon bars. I feel stalked.

What grinds me is when I read something that's familiar, as in "Hey wait, didn't XXX just write that yesterday?" I don't mind referencing someone's post and going farther with the idea. I do mind swiping it entirely and not attributing even the idea to someone else. It happens a lot, too.

rebecca said...

What makes me not return to a particular blog, believe it or not, is if the page is a certain color, for example as in pink with color type. I prefer clean-looking blogs with black type as I'm there to read content and not be met by bells and whistles. I find anything other than that too distracting and annoying. Plus, blogs that have so many pictures, etc. that it takes forever to load. And I agree with you on liking blogs that show blog roll but mine is so extensive that to have it be shown publicly I think would not fit. However, I do have links on my page to prompt sites and writing sites that I think would be of interest to writers.

Jennifer said...

@Lori, I totally agree--a lot of stuff gets repeated out there. I don't mind if the writer attributes where they got the idea, takes it in a different direction, and treats the whole thing like a conversation--that's fine. What bothers me is when things are just rehashed without credit.

@Rebecca--I feel the same way. Some color schemes just hurt the eyes, and I usually feel like simple is better. Some blogs try to make up in visuals what they're lacking in writing, and it's hard to stick with stuff like that. I've gotten a lot of advice saying I need to have more pictures on my blog--but pictures on blogs tend to annoy me, especially if there are a lot of them. I guess that's how you know we're word people :)