For The Record, I'm Not Cool About This

The vast majority of Bloggityville is beyond awesome. Good grief, the friends I have made! But I have a bit of a bone to pick so gird your loins people. Are they girded? Good.

I'm a fairly happy-go-lucky blog admin-y kind of person. I don't require word verification or enable comment moderation. But I have just one small request for anyone leaving comments on Lizzie's Home. It's teeny really. Minuscule.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE refrain from hijacking my comments to sell me (or my readers) anything.

There are two levels to this. One is a straight out text link at the end of your comment. If you're a personal blogger, there's no need to worry about not being reachable, since you can always slide your blog link into the Name/URL option when leaving the comment. I want you to link to your blog. And say nice stuff about what I write. Keep doing that! But if you're a business, I will delete your comment, even if it was complimentary.

The second level of solicitation is more sneaky, but in a lot of ways, worse. DO NOT put your business link in the 'URL' part of the Name/URL option when leaving a comment! Normally, when I see a comment, I will visit your site. It's polite, not to mention really cool, to meet new people. But if that link takes me to your business (or spam) site, I feel cheated. And it makes me mutter things about comment moderation and word verification and I don't want to go down that bleak, nasty road. It's bothersome for me (extra admin work) and let's be honest, sort of annoying for the folk leaving comments. Again, play nice or you WILL have your comment deleted.

Now, if your comment was genuine, but got deleted, I invite you to re-comment. I love comments! If you really don't have a personal blog to link to, it doesn't mean you can't join in. Just leave the URL part blank.

Guys, I don't want to be one of those bloggers who gets all riled up over stupid admin-y type things like this, I really don't. But I have always held a very strong opinion about advertising on this blog - in that I don't do it - and if my readers are anything like how I am on others' comment streams, they're going to click on commenter's links and names. With each of these click-throughs, I am, in effect, advertising for you. For free. And if you're a business, that bothers me. So don't do it. Please.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programs.

Please note: Genuine, personal blogs/bloggers, even if they sell something 'on the side', will never be deleted from any comment here (unless, of course, they're mean and nasty trolls, in which case, be gone with you!). There's a big difference between a personal blog which also sells something and a business website where selling is the main objective. And clearly, this is all at my own discretion. So play nice, and we'll all get along swimmingly :)