For me, commenting has been an evolution of sorts. I grew up with a Xanga in high school, purely for expressive and social purposes, of course. At that time, commenting was all about how many people commented on YOUR blog, and who-said-what-about-whose-sister's-cousin's-stepbrother's-goat. Eventually, I got to college, matured, and commenting became a way for me to say, "HEY! HEY! HERE ARE MY POLITICAL BELIEFS!" Classy, no? Finally, I realized toward the end of my college career that both of those types of comments are, in fact, not constructive and I switched to making encouraging or thought-provoking comments on blogs, trying to stay away from being too judgmental.
Overall, I think that commenting can be very useful as a tool to see all sides of an issue, to add resources, and to show support. In most of the blogs I commented on, there weren't many changes to add resources, so I mainly focused on showing support or giving a little bit of a "devil's advocate" statement in some of the wider-read blogs. For example, this afternoon on the Reading Room Blog at the NYTimes, I wrote a short comment on The Literal Power of Words. Of course, it has yet to be approved, but I doubt that it will have any problem getting through based on what's already there. I tried to point out the merits of the argument rather than get wrapped up in the comments of others that were going nowhere.
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