Thanks Rachael, I appreciate your honest response. I can have difficulty dealing with difficult/rude comments that aren't helpful or informative. It's only happened a few tiimes, and I've gone to defend myself but then blocked, as it wasn't productive. On retrospect I may have been better off not commenting. If you're not regularly on Medium also, you loose track of comments and your point about writing controversial stories and bring afraid to check comments, I can understand. Problem is comments are part of the "so called" full engagement process. Personally I am happy with a clap and don't take it so personally anymore if an author doesn't reply. Reading and comments are just one part of writing on Medium, not the whole experience. We make Medium the experience we want it to be for ourselves, which means writing as well as comments on stories. Oh, and the "nice article" type comments are annoying. See them a lot. Thanks for reading my story and your response. 🙂