Once upon a time, Marie visited here and realized that I had responded to a comment of hers in the comments. She had previously thought I hadn’t responded at all – she was expecting a reply via e-mail. She wanted to know why I replied in a comment rather than an e-mail. My rationale was a hope for discussion – I have occasionally responded to comments via e-mail where the response might contain information not available to the wider world, but for the most part, I have always hoped for dialogue.
My site isn’t really popular enough to invite dialogue much, though. So my hope has been mostly in vain. It also seemed like there might be a middle ground available somewhere.
Enter the new WordPress version 2 of WoT, and I discover a plugin that enables me to respond to comments and send an e-mail to the commenter at the same time. Marvelous. After being stumped by the install (why is it so often the case that the most vexing problems have the most “oh, duh” solutions? Or is that just me? On second thought, maybe I don’t want the answer to that), it seemed to work (sorry for the double-reply, Rana). Just to make sure, I did a test reply to one of my own comments, and waited for that message to roll into my inbox.
And I waited.
And waited…
“Dammit,” I thought. “Doesn’t work. What dumb thing did I do this time?”
Then I had another thought. Click, click… aha.
My own inbox classified me as spam.
So, please ignore the choking noises and just enjoy the picture of Milo.
