Comment Policies

This little blog of mine has gained enough importance to slowly become a target for spammers, it seems. Because spam-type comments have turned up only very seldom in the past, I have never voiced any spam-comment policy, but I feel that it is time now to do so.

If you have tried to comment on an older post, you will have found that comment moderation is enabled. Fresh posts can be commented on without moderation (pun intended), but screening comments makes it easier for me to nip a multi-post comment spam attack in the bud (there were about two of these already, and cleaning them up takes time and gets on my nerves in a major way).

As to the rest... I feel that freedom of speech is an important thing, and I also think that the internet is a very good and very valuable platform to say (write, that is) what you mean, feel, and think. However, I also feel that a blog post and its comments are something like a conversation between blog author and commenters, and if I'm standing around in real life chatting with a bunch of people about, say, ice cream flavours and discussing their impact on the environment and somebody suddenly starts to praise an ice cream factory that is known to mine the last glaciers, grand-style, for ice, or suddenly intrudes on the conversation with a speech about how we should all convert to the Church of the Holy Spaghetti Monster and dress up like pirates AT ONCE... I would feel quite pissed off.

And since these spammers are just delivering their bit and turn away again at once, it isn't even possible to start discussing them into the ground about how mining these last glaciers is the worst thing ever, and so on.

So here's the official comment policy: Comments are more than welcome, whether they agree with me or disagree with me, as long as there is some connection to the blog post they belong to. Unsolicited advice on what, where or how to buy something, product placement including unrelated blog or website placements*, buy-here links and other spam-type comments whether religious or not, will be deleted from my blog. Abusive comments may also be deleted. Comments are moderated for older posts to screen out the bad eggs before they turn up, saving you from disappointment after you click to see the new comment.

That's it. Now... comments, anyone?

* Pointing out a website or blog that is related to the topic of the blog post, or to the general topic of the blog is very welcome, of course!