Today I’ve alienated hundreds of my most active readers on this blog.  Please accept my apologies if you are among them.

This site was never expected to draw much interest, outside of what a few friends chose to give.  From the beginning, I’ve been clear it is presented by me for others to take from it whatever they will.  The recent scaling up of participation and broadening of readership was quite unexpected.

I know the importance of being open minded when you take in the reactions of your audience.  Yet I suddenly found these very personal values being tested daily by many of my new readers.  Maybe I can’t even explain it in a way that leads anyone to agree with my decision.  Perhaps I *have* acted hastily, and I will see that in time.

After all, it really wasn’t so bad.  Xigidib’s comment on the “Amazon Customer Service”  post about male enlargement pills made it’s own logical points.  Although I didn’t apply the strategy in own my life, perhaps following their advice *would* help somebody to get better phone support.  But Haojipisippuz’s tersely written contribution on pharmaceuticals seemed to have missed the original spirit of my “blue screen of death” post on the US economy entirely.  In short, these new arrivals didn’t fit in with the existing community very well at all.

I’m not trying to be a tyrant and censor real discourse here.  Sometimes you have to make hard choices.  You learn to get past your initial fear of loss of readership.  It’s not something you had ever planned to do, but sometimes it’s best for everyone just to part ways as amicably as possible.  You have to foster the belief within yourself to know you’ll gain back much more in the future than was lost today.  Yet I wonder if I can really be so sure that the ultimate project goals can be realized without their many contributions.

So as I say goodbye to my hundreds of Spam-bot commenters on this blog, hopefully we all can one day see this parting of ways as having been for the best.  I’ve installed the WP-SpamFree plugin and there’s no looking back now.

1,057 comments pending moderation: