A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 Reflections

Since I have a strong tendency to FORGET things, I may have forgotten to write this when I had planned to and in fact may forget to put in some important thing.  I hope not...

First, the Positive aspects of the challenge:

• It was very well organized and advertized
• There were many participants, from diverse backgrounds, locations and perspectives
• I found a LOT of new blogs to follow
• Many new friends are following my blog :)
• There was a lot of information up front about how to be successful and by reading that I was able to finish the challenge successfully and change up many aspects of my blog to make it more reader and comment friendly.  I do love me some comments!
• After reading so many blog posts with the Captcha turned off, when I found one with that in it I was shocked! :)  I only had one or two anonymous comments that were unrelated to the post and those were directed to Blogger's spam folder.
• I like only having to link up ONE time at the beginning of the challenge instead of daily--sometimes I can't get to my computer until late in the day and not having to stress if I didn't make it at all was really nice!
• My Google Chrome browser highlighted which blogs I had already visited on the linky list so I could check out new ones easily since (as I mentioned before) I am inclined to FORGET things like where I had been before.  It only worked if I clicked the link directly from the list (as opposed to from another comment on a blog) and in Chrome (not Firefox) but that was how I usually went "shopping" for another friend. :)
• I love that there was not a set theme other than the alphabet letter for the day--you could choose your own theme for the month or choose not to use one at all and fly by the seat of your pants. 
• I was also glad there was no length requirement.  Some of my favorite reads were just a picture with a caption.  I also found that if the post was really long and about a topic I was only marginally interested in, I didn't spend much time there.
• I was challenged to amp up my writing, both in quality and quantity. The challenge seemed to attract a really large group of "real" writers, and their content was more often than not meaty and fun to read with fewer glaring grammar errors. 
• Truly, this was an amazing collection of bloggers!  Not only did most of them reciprocate visits, a lot of them left great comments. I have never had that type of response in any other blogging carnival/hop  in the past.

Now for the negative aspects, if one could call it that--Perhaps more like constructive criticism?

• There were several blogs I visited that never did post a single entry for the challenge after they announced they were participating or else dropped out early in the month. I couldn't find the email address to send the links to so I didn't ever report them. Even at the end of the month I was still stumbling across some of those.  Perhaps there could be a link on the linky page of the A to Z blog about where to report? (or did I just miss it??)
• I came across several blogs with Adult Content that were not flagged on the list. I may choose to visit one, but I would like to know in advance it is such. Otherwise the tags on the blogs were somewhat helpful when deciding which ones to visit.  For the most part the AC notes were the only ones I tended to avoid because I FORGOT what the different letters stood for other than WR and I didn't want to take the time to go back up and read the list.
• The Disqus comment thing was annoying.  Some of the blogs allowed you to comment with just your name and email address, but others required you to have a Disqus account or log in with Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.  I didn't comment there.
• Some of the blogger profiles are linked to their Google+ account, but there is not a visible link to their blog in their feed. So, when tracing down a comment I was directed to Google+ but couldn't reciprocate their visit because I couldn't find their blog address.  Perhaps if someone has their blog set up this way they might add a blog link to their home page or else in the comment itself.
• I was more likely to comment on a blog whose comment link was at the bottom of the post as opposed to having to drive back up to the top to find it.  Some of them were so small and hard to find it took a lot of time.  
• I was more likely to read a post if the entire thing was displayed when I arrived on the site as opposed to having to click a "read more" link. Page re-loads take valuable reading time and as I mentioned above, I have a tendency to peruse the length of the post before I read it to determine if I have enough time (or attention) to give to a lengthy piece or not.

And that is about it.  Thanks to Arlee Bird and all the helpers who made the challenge so much fun and easy to participate in.  Thanks to all my new followers and those who left such insightful comments on the posts. Thanks to you for reading this one!  I'll be back next year, maybe on more than one blog! :)