Changes to This Blog

I have been forced to make some changes to the settings for this blog.

Comments are an important part of a blog, and in fact I would prefer that more readers would leave comments, but few actually do.

And I would really llike to make it as easy as possible for readers to contribute their thoughts on a post they read here.

But spam is everywhere and robots are insidious.

You may have noticed that a gobblygook comment was left on a recent post, and now there is another silly one that was left on yesterday's post.

My previous setting allowed anyone to comment without moderation by me on any post in order to encourage participation, and I had set three days as a reasonable outside limit before my 'permission' would be required to post a comment.

What this meant was that if you were reading my blog and you went back more than three days, had you wanted to post a comment on an older post, you still could but it first came to me by way of e-mail and I had to "accept" or "reject" the comment.  This eliminated a lot of the spam that tries to get through and it certainly took care of the robots that infiltrate blogs.  But unfortunately, the spammers and the robots have gotten a little more current in their efforts and they are now attacking my blog within that three-day threshold so their nonsense is being posted and I can't remove it!

So, I have now changed the settings back to the highest security I can put on it -- which unfortunately will make legitimate readers jump through extra hoops if they want to leave a comment.

Now, everyone will have to go through the stupid word verification exercise just for the privilege of posting a comment on my little old blog, and their comment will first have to be accepted by me.

It's the 'accepting' and 'rejectiing' part that I find offensive.  I don't like the perception that I would be cherrypicking which comments should be posted, as though I'm only going to allow those comments with which I agree.  That is not the case:  I only want to weed out the comments that are not from legitimate readers.

So please, all you readers out there in blog land, do leave comments.  I'm sorry for the extra inconvenience you have to go through in order to do so, but please do participate in the discussion if you feel so inclined.