I take your point about these figures being a rough guide that may or may not mean anything at all, and I certainly wasn't preferring them as Ultimate Evidence (hence the "soap box" comment). Nonetheless, I think it shows the general trend of how much people tend to post on LJ, and that a 'normal' amount of traffic seems to be in the range of 4,000 to 6,000 responses over a few years. We obviously interpret what that means differently (which is fine), because I don't see how someone with 19,000 comments can be magically expected to have time to post more than the normal amount in reply, and furthermore, that no matter how much they reply it will always *always* look like they're playing favourites just because of the sheer volume of unanswered comments on their journal. From personal experience I know that I sometimes answer in a kind of potluck fashion, going for the most interesting comments (as I don't have time to answer everyone), and anyone casually glancing at the pattern of my replies could assume I was just responding to 'friends', and ignoring everyone else, when that isn't the pattern at all.

That's the main thrust of everything I've said here, really. That it's easy to read things into silence that aren't anything close to the intention of the person not speaking. Silence is not evidence, it's anti-evidence. I've run up against this problem before in academic work, because there tends to be a big silence in response to sf by women--those texts tend to get elided and fade away, except in feminist circles. It's really, really *hard* to argue against silence; you can point it out, you can suggest that the shape means certain things, but you can never get to grips with it satisfactorily. And at least in a case like that, there are cultural trends, like endemic sexism, you can point the finger to. With just one person's silence, it's hard to read anything into it but an untheorised absence.

For all I know, Pru's 'silence' could mean that she's a terrible, cliquey bitch. I just hesitate to make that interpretation, because it could be so many other things. Especially as she's posting within the normal range of comments, and no matter how hard she tries, she could never, ever reply to all the comments she's received. In fact, with that many comments, I could see how easy it would be to lose heart, be overwhelmed, and not even know where to begin.