UPDATE



Hi. This is an old, unmaintained blog. You may find these sites more to your liking:

Carson Brackney: This is my primary site.

Ad Astra Traffic: Content production/article writing service.

Ad Astra Traffic Team: For those who'd like to get writing gigs with Ad Astra.


Monday, July 24, 2006

Reluctantly creating a barrier to participation... Comment spam spurs change...

I started this blog as a means of promoting Content Done Better and as a platform from which I could address issues relevant to the content industry. I also like the idea as a site for communication. As such, I decided to make it as easy as possible to comment on any of the posts here.

I believe in open communication and like to facilitate dialog when possible, so I decided against any sort of pre-publication moderation. I personally appreciate comment interfaces that allow me to add my $.02 and move on to whatever is next, so I opted not to use the blogger.com "captcha" feature, either.

I still won't be making anyone await my "thumbs up" before a comment hits the screen, but I will be forcing visitors to type in those annoying codes before commenting.

Although I am pleasantly surprised at the level of readership this blog gets, especially considering its reasonably narrow "target demographic," it really doesn't get a great deal of comments (see: "Your comments are appreciated..." where I lament this fact).

The comments I do get are usually great and some are even flattering, but there aren't a LOT of them. Thus, I figure the people posting comments here are part of a core readership who won't be dissuaded from participation by having to decipher and re-type "XALKDH" or whatever. I am also guessing that most of them will understand why I am doing this.

This blog receives approximately 3-5 spam comments daily. They get added to both old and new posts. They annoy me and they probably annoy readers who say, "hmmm, a comment, let me check that out" only to find an advertisement for someone's unrelated site.

I also have too much respect for anyone who is going to read this blog to subject them to a bunch of unrelated garbage.

Plus, if someone wants to advertise on this site, they can click on the Adbrite button on the sidebar and pay for the privilege, as far as I am concerned.

So, to those of you who do comment, please don't let the extra step dissuade you, and thanks for reading!