Get blogging

Some say blogging is about conversation, but one of the curses of popularity is that sometimes those conversations attract a rather odd crowd of hangers-on who tend to pollute rather than add to the debate. A recent blogger's do (all links in this sentence in Norwegian) even revealed that women who write more personality driven blogs often attract a fair share of stalkers. So how do you deal with the unwelcome side effects of popularity? Here's Guido Fawkes, one of the UK's most popular political bloggers, attempting to address this (via Martin Stabe):

Now the daily readership is 10,000+ plus, and a good proportion of them seem to be total loons, it is getting tedious to have to delete dozens of comments a day. There also appears to be some kind of misunderstanding about the blog's purpose - it is not a public service.

So for guidance here is a reminder of the somewhat arbitrary comments deletion policy:

If you want to libel someone - get your own blog.
If you want to abuse Guido, get your own blog (unless you do it wittily).
If you want to complain about jews, blacks, lizards, little green men in your head etc. Get your own blog.

If you want to complain that it is biased, get your own unbiased blog.
If you want lengthy discussion about policy, bore on your own blog.
If you get offended easily, don't complain, don't come back.

For my own part I have to say that the 'commentatorship' on my blog is superb - the comments are far and few between, but when they do appear it's always high quality stuff, except the odd spammer. I, on the other hand, often feel guilty about being too slow to reply as I too often find myself tied up with too many pressing deadlines, the curse of being self-employed - no 9-5 here, but if I'm slow to reply it does not mean that I don't appreciate the comment.