Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Thought Dumping



The following are some of my thoughts about the internet and fair play. They are not a rant, though with a little push they could become one.
But right now they are just noise inside my head and I’m letting a little spill out.

Linksys
It seems to me if you are taking part in some meme that has a linksy and you sign it then you have an obligation to visit the other blogs that signed it. You signed it because you want people to know you are part of the group and want them to read what you have written or see the picture you posted or note whatever it is you did.
But if you want them to visit your blog shouldn’t you visit their’s. They also worked hard to write or whatever and want people to see. It to some extent validates the time spent on the project. Then you also need to leave a comment so they will know you are there.
I try very hard to do this as a matter of fairness. But I know of a number of bloggers who never bother.

Owner Approval
I can not understand the whole thing of owner approval.
What are we afraid of.
Are we afraid of a nasty comment. Are we afraid of spam?
What are we afraid of.
If one is on blogger the blog owner can delete any comment at any time.
Since you have to read them to give your approval why not give your friends a break and delete anything you don’t like from the comment list.
It’s not like you won’t see the comment either way.

Dang &&&%#*** code
The same thing is true of the type in codes.
It is supposed to protect you from spam and machine comments.
But spam happens anyway. I have a flower company that spams me all the time but they have a blogger account.
Since we can delete spam or any comment we don’t like why cause your friends the hassle of typing in bloggers sometimes impossible to read letter lists? The truth is the ability to delete is a great protection.
I don’t use pre approval and I don’t use codes but I almost never get spam or any kind of garbage. But when I do I gleefully delete.

Okay. That’s what I’m thinking.
I could be wrong now but I don’t think so.

Chaos Day Two

Yesterday Chaos continued to reign or is that rain? People sleeping everywhere-Pennie in my lift chair in the living room, the boys in the computer room, Alex at Pennie's side of the building, Maggie anywhere they let her. Had an upset stomach and breakfast was late, lunch was very late, and the evening meal never happened. Poor Betty drove Pennie to have blood taken, drove Pennie to the Doctor, drove Pennie to get stuff for VBS, cooked, and worked on the dog costume.
Da boys left clothes everywhere a trail from computer room to bathroom and monopolized the computers. But dog costume got finished and everybody but me went to VBS.

21 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just hit the delete key as well. And I agree with you with Mr. Linky. I've quit some of those because even the host or hostess didn't read what I posted. Not fair. Have a great day :)

1:27 AM  
Blogger Jinksy said...

Great series of valid points you have here - rant away, I say. Maybe you could add the one about people not giving out an email address, so's you can either tell them what you think of their comments, or reply to their questions?!

1:28 AM  
Blogger Jientje said...

I agree with most of this, code and owner approvoval are completely superficial since you can delete what you don't approve of anyway. But the Mr Linky however...

I don't think there should be any obligation to visit all the others if you're joining a meme. It's there to let people know you have played. For instance, if you do a Wordless Wednesday or a Photo Hunt on Saturdays, there are a gazillion players out there. There is no way you can visit them all. I always make a point out of visiting everyone back who has visited me, but I have so many daily visitors already each day it would be too much to ask to visit all the links in a Mr Linky. The only one who SHOULD do that is the hostess. So whenever I'm hosting my idioms game, I visit all my players. Mary the Teach does that too. But many hostesses do not bother, and THAT is not right. If you do not want to visit your players, you should not HOST a meme.

2:20 AM  
Blogger anthonynorth said...

Well said! I'm perfectly open with comments on my blog. Okay, wordpress has a good spam filter, but other than that, everything comes straight on, and I delete the spam that gets through.
On meme/prompt linking, I agree. When I first go on a new prompt site, I try to read and comment on them all. After a couple of weeks you know who's playing the game and commenting back. I continue to comment on theirs and always try to return a visit to any commenter who strays my way.
It's called good manners.

3:03 AM  
Blogger Lou said...

I'm part of a group of recovery bloggers. That is not all I blog about, but it has a 12 step theme for sure. When I started (a little over a year ago) there was a fanatical "Christian" that for some reason hates AA, NA, AlAnon, etc. I would open my comments in the morning, and I would have 50 rants from this guy, some of it very incoherent. He would threaten damnation, all kinds of completely insane (but disturbing) stuff. He did it to all of us, some people got 100 comments a day from him. He even put up a website and listed our blogs as devil's work, and so on.

That is why we all have comment moderation on our blogs.

3:47 AM  
Blogger Dr.John said...

Lou- Wouldn't deleting his comments serve the same purpose?

5:39 AM  
Blogger Dr.John said...

Jientje-the linksys I've been part of never had more than fifteen participants. One could easily visit and comment on them all.

5:51 AM  
Blogger LoieJ said...

I learn something every day: never heard of linksy before.

I think that the moderation and secret words serve a purpose for those bloggers who can't spend as much time on their computers as you and I do. If I visit a blog and I'm very interested in the give and take, I sign up for receiving the comments in my email. If there are subsequent comments that are deleted either by the writer or the blog owner, they will still show up in my email. No one wants a gross, pun intended, of nasty comments as emails. Plus, getting that will drive people to not comment or even read a specific blog anymore.

If the blog owner can't get back to the computer shortly after getting bad comments, they are out there for the eyes of other bloggers. So I think that the codes, etc. are for the benefit of both the blog owner and the readers.

The codes used to be a problem for me because I tended to mistype them, apparently, but blogger seems to have improved them.

6:12 AM  
Blogger Melli said...

I agree with Lou in her specific case -- if you're getting 50-100 spams a day... but I BELIEVE there is also a way to BAN certain people from visiting your blog at all... though I could be wrong. At any rate... it is far easier to allow 20 comments a day rather than have to delete 50-100! And knowing that his comments will never get published may well deter the spammer from coming back too often!

I also agree with Jientje HALF WAY about visiting other linkies... I flat out QUIT playing Saturday Photo Hunt AND SkyWatch because the lists just got too long! 300-500 people playing! It would take me two weeks to visit them all! I do NOT play Ruby Tuesday or any of the other BIG ones IF I don't have time to visit at LEAST 20 other participants. That is why some weeks I play - other weeks I do not play. And that is my rule for any Linksy! I will visit 20 - aside from my daily friends who might also play the same game - but I'm not visiting 50 or 100 people!

Both of those things said, I don't use any of the stuff and I so rarely get spam that it really is a NONissue to me! (maybe once or twice a YEAR!)

I'm sO glad Betty got the dog costume DONE! And now I can't wait to see pictures of it! You didn't get to GO? Was that your choice? Or was there no room in the car??? I can't SEE you missing out on VBS! But maybe you needed to rest after the chaos? I'm prayin' for Pennie... I sure hope she's improving!

6:45 AM  
Blogger Akelamalu said...

I agree with you on all 3 rants Dr. John - are we twins separated at birth? LOL

7:33 AM  
Blogger DawnTreader said...

I think I have to disagree... I don't think a linksy should necessarily mean an obligation to read and comment on every other participant, every time. Even with the host/hostess, I'd say it depends on whether they have promised to or not.

8:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thoughts implemented through writings. Very useful otherwise we or atleast I only think.
But Am I going to change ?
That is a question.
lets see...

9:13 AM  
Blogger aims said...

Now I know why I have never done a meme or joined in any of the games going on. It doesn't sound like tons of fun down the line.

I'm with you on these Dr. John. I've always wondered about the owner approval thing and I groan when I have to type in word verification. I want to be off and reading something else instead of being forced to verify I just typed something.

Is chaos coming to an end soon?

9:16 AM  
Blogger secret agent woman said...

On the first, I don't guess I've done a meme that required me signing on to anything, except for the Blogblast for Peace which has hundreds of participants and so visiting would be an impossibility. I try to visit everyone who visits my blog, but I'm a single mom working full-time and so just do what I can as I have time. I've let go of the idea that I'm obligated to do anything with the blogworld and just make my own guidelines.

I mostly agree about comment moderation, but I've turned it on twice when I had two different people who were leaving hateful, obscene comments. Since I could only log on a couple of times a day, I did not want their filth to to be visible to anyone. They'd give up after a while, and I'd turn comment moderation back off.

And yeah, I had word verification, too! Even with spambots, I just delete those comments as they arrive. No big deal.

12:02 PM  
Blogger Bill ~ {The Old Fart} said...

I agree with you on a couple of points, but I do like the Word Verification thing, I hate the spammers, this is why blogger came up with the word verification.

I hope Pennie is feeling better, Betty must have been tired when she got home. Hope we can see some pictures of the Dog Costume.

1:22 PM  
Blogger hope said...

It's okay, Dr. John, keep that soapbox in reach for the rest of us.

I understand the Owner Approval concept but it does make you feel like you're jumping through an extra hoop...or should be patted down prior to entering the premises. I've been lucky to find spam quickly [and not often] and delete it. But those #@!* word verifications are annoying! And they're getting evil. I had one the other week that was "usuck". Sigh.

Um Melli, if you remember how to ban readers, kindly tell me. I'm a grown woman and my MOTHER keeps e-mailing me to correct my posts. :0

3:34 PM  
Blogger Lou said...

Yes, Dr John I could delete his comments. I just didn't think all the other bloggers really needed to wade through his crap to leave a comment. As one reader pointed out, I don't get to my computer for long stretches of time. The comments were sitting there, till I got to them. I did not want to give this guy any attention. Neither did the other people who got inundated by him.

I don't have word verification. I really don't understand that extra step when someone already has comment moderation. That does seem redundant. On the other hand, it does not bother if I have to do it.

5:48 PM  
Blogger Voegtli said...

I agree with you. A long time ago, I put comment approval. It was to much work to follow that. So, I cancelled it and I did not get spammed. From time to time a comment that has nothing to with my post and is rather an advertisement for another blog/website and it is so rare that I can easily live with it.

The story is different with my "Memoirs" where I got a real nasty comment. I could have simply deleted it. But as the memoirs, of course, concern also my family, I prefered to make a separate "by invitation only" blog.

7:09 PM  
Anonymous Alice Audrey said...

I agree totally on the blog etiquette. When I first started blogging I worked hard to find other Romance writers to comment on in the hopes they could come and check me out. So many of them seem to think if they post anything at all, they are done. Needless to say, there are many bloggers I no longer bother with.

9:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with most of this, code and owner approvoval are completely superficial since you can delete what you don't approve of anyway.

___________________
Julie

We do your Marketing for best sales

12:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with most of this, code and owner approvoval are completely superficial since you can delete what you don't approve of anyway.

___________________
Julie

We do your Marketing for best sales

12:09 AM  

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