Yipee! I’m on vacation
I truly appreciate the thoughtful submissions you readers made on my blog post Who owns blog comments? and I will be referring to them as I continue to refine my comments policy. Your comments lead me to believe that my existing policy is sound, however, I do find that this self-hosted and advertising free blog has attracted many more ’spammish’ comments than it did when it was a free hosted blog. For example, I frequently receive comments linked to sites that are promoting ‘make a million on the internet’ scams.
IMO these commentators are only posting to my blog in the hopes that my other readers will click their username links to their sites and, consume whatever it is that they are selling. When I receive these commercially motivated comments, I make either one of the two following choices:
(1) Edit to remove commercial links and then post the comments. Note that I make this choice when the comment does contain commentary that directly relates to the blog post in question. Also note that I do not post a notification that states that I removed the link or links.
(2) Delete the comments. I make this choice when the comment does not contain commentary that directly relates to the blog post in question.
I have received some nasty feedback from disgruntled ‘would be’ marketers, who felt that my blog ought to function in a way that allows them to promote their business interests but, I stood firm.
Although I feel somewhat guilty about not publishing a wrap-up post on commenting policy, I’m making the choice to devote as much time as I can to being with my friend in this next week.
I live in relative isolation and I rarely see more than a 1/2 dozen people, mostly men, on any given week during the winter months. Suffice to say that I have been longing for a ‘girl talk’ all winter long.
Well, last week my friend, who has been my friend for over 30 years, and whom I have not seen for almost a year came to visit. I spent hectic week trying to juggle work, home, blogging, while also attempting to slot in some time for us to just ‘be’ with each other. Finally, on Sunday, we got some time alone but it wasn’t enough time so she’s staying for another week, provided that I also take a holiday.
Yipee! I’m on vacation.
Feb 26th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Good for you on standing firm on the marketer comments. I too have had a few that have left comments and I have chosen to delete them and later have gotten another comment, or a contact via my contact form asking why. I have answered these queries honestly and in most cases never heard back from them.
The thing is, these are our blogs, and we have the right to decide what comments we allow and which we do not.
Feb 26th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
By the way, have a great time on vacation!!!
Feb 26th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Thanks Richard both for supporting the stand I took and also for wishing me a happy holiday. :-)
I figure that the comments issue can wait.
Feb 28th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Those comments you get sound very strange. I had a few like that when I had a blog with Blogger for a while but they never followed up then. Just what we need, spammers getting even more aggressive.
Hope you have a great break! Time with friends is very precious… I might follow your lead and catch up with a few friends here too. :)
Feb 28th, 2008 at 11:49 am
A significant number of my readers loathe what has happened to blogs via their monetization and I’m aware of that. Just 5 years ago we could read blogs and see not a single ad on them but now we find many “make a million on the internet” blogs, as well as, blogs covered with advertising.
The primary reason I moved this “personal” blog from a free hosted blogging platform was because I saw that the blog host had covered our blogs with adsense. Now I am deleting every commercial link that I receive in comments and I will continue to do so.