Between a rock and a hard place?

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't!

I think we get too precious about the quality of comments on our blog; believing it somehow reflects on the value of the content. And I know a few of us get way too stressed, and start to indulge in a form of censorship.

Although, obviously, you need to keep the bots out, the answer is not better systems; its better commenters. And you get better commenters with better content.

There's always one idiot who turns up and starts some shenanigans, but that's true of all our lives, isn't it? And our personal radar is pretty well tuned to this, in real life, and we know clicking the alert button will soon take care of that.

Turn on Akismet and Cloudflare, for example ~ and whatever programmatic layers of defence you really do need ~ and then turn off your approval systems. Work hard to write the kind of content people love and value, and ban the dorks who don't know how to behave.

But don't, please don't moderate me. If you do, I will just go elsewhere and write my thoughtful, helpful and sometimes irrational and ideas on somebody else's thought provoking blog.

And if I do slip up and give in to the ranting going on inside my head. Laugh at me, or with me, but don't censor me.

I am the reason you started a blog in the first place.

Terence.