Ah, another awesome weekend in Bangkok. Unfortunately, like all weekends they come to an end. It’s approximately 6:40 am and I have been in a van from Bangkok heading to Hua Hin for a little over an hour and half. It’s not my own van with my own chauffeur (I’m working on this one though), but rather a community of people in the van. What I mean is that it is public transportation where tickets are sold until the seats are filled up. We are sat 3 wide in 4 – 5 rows depending on the customization of the van. I’m a little too shy to make eye contact with anyone behind me, so I will just guess this is one of the four row vans.
Anyways, I’m not too concerned with the people a couple rows back. The most influential people, as we all know, are the people “nearest us.” Usually this is an endearing term, but for my case, a rather suffocating one. You see, the 20 – 30 some male character sitting to my right seems to have special privileges as the saliva dripping corner of his mouth seems to be looming closer and closer to my right shoulder. He seems to need to make use of my shoulder as a pillow. He also is doing the “Mighty Ducks Flying V” (Go Minnesota!) maneuver with his legs. Basically, my legs are sandwiched in a small area, feet locked together, and I will be left with some cramps as I attempt to get off this vehicle. My notebook is using his right leg to stay flat as I can’t support it with half my body turned sideways trying to give this jerk some room. I sure hope he can’t read English.
What I am getting at is you should respect your blogging neighbors. This is my seat. Get the hell off of it. This is my blog. If I want you to say something I leave the comments open for you, and I will take your guest posts. I have no reason to stop you from saying what you want to say, but I can certainly prevent you or lessen your chances of getting your words seen. Tough life, right?
I don’t want to do that. I quite enjoy any criticism I get, and love the discussions formed from them. But there are times you need to realize when a comment is no longer helpful and goes from turning someone else’s blog into your own. Here’s what I expect and what I do to not take over your blog:
Grammar and Spelling
I used to be a huge stickler about this. I still am. I cringe when I see it wrong. I cry when I realize I did it on my own posts. However, you don’t need to tell me. I don’t care if I left an apostrophe out of don’t. I don’t care that you have hawk like eyes. I don’t care if I said worser instead of more worse. They comments are so annoying, especially when they are the whole comment. Leave me something useful and then if you want to point out the I spelled “Pens” with an extra “I”, that might be a good idea. I’ve since stopped doing this because I’d block your IP if you did it to me. Haha!
You Shouldn’t Have Written it Like This
Hohoho! What? I shouldn’t have written it like this? Well then step right up big shot and take a swing at. A blog is a form of expression (an art actually), which allows its author/s to express their opinion in their own way with their own style. Unless you are debating me on an opposite view, or adding to what I already said, don’t tell me how I “should write.” My writing style is unique to myself, and my ideas and opinions are formed by me. Not you, and unless you somehow write me some amazing email telling me why I am factually wrong about what I just wrote, I will never change what I write for you. I will write for my audience, but use my style and my voice, not yours.
I Just Wrote a Blog Entry Like This…
This one gets on my nerves, too. “I just wrote a blog post all about this. Look Here! (adds link to own blog).” Hey, I don’t care if you tell me why I should go look at your blog post that is similar to mine. Did you add some new points to what I said? Did I repeat some of what you said and build off that? Do we have opposite views!? Great! Leave a long comment post, rephrasing what you said in that blog post, maybe even copying and pasting from it. Then add your link. I guarantee, you will get so many more views with an intellectual comment. Make me want it, otherwise I will just mark it as spam.
How can a blogger deal with these kinds of random comments? My sadistic answer to that question would be… “DELETED” (Who else loves Strongbad?) Is that the best way to handle things though? Of course not. Address these problems on your blog. If someone is leaving short one line comments and links to all their posts, keep marking them as spam until they catch the drift. If they are persistent, write a blog post about how annoying they are (once again, a very sadistic but effective method). This is sure to get them fired up enough to write up an awesome comment or maybe even a back link as they argue you on their blog. Incentivizing your comments is an excellent way to get quality critique from your blogging peers as well. I am doing this on my blog now, and in fact, I would like to congratulate Michael from DollarStackin’ for winning a 125 x 125 ad spot on Blogosis for a month. Your comment really made a fueled debate on this post.
What are some of the ways everyone else deals with this crap? Do you just ignore it, or take a stand?
