I miss Gregorygrady, where is he? I hope he is okay!

I like Pepsi, the choice of the new generation

Seriously, how many times do we need to be reminded about this.

Your most important asset is your credibility.

About as often as the cheap shots from the peanut gallery

Seems fair to me.

I had a very smart and successful blogger tell me today,


"this situation is just like a republican speaking at the democratic convention or democrat speaking to republicans.

their minds are already made up no matter what you do or say. And I'm sure you get way more positive emails and compliments than negatives. Just ignore them"

More sound advice and truth from a blogger, that I often have differing opinions with. in this case, he is absolutely right.

last post but i bet you come back to pick off mileage runs to post on your blog and to make baloney edits to wiki's to make your blog sound better

FTG, sounds more like selective hearing (not much different than censoring comments). It's a slippery slope. Here's my advice to you. Just suck it up and admit when you are wrong. Don't come up with nonsensical excuses to further destroy your credibility.

Nah, I'll go with the other bloggers sound advice. Just ignore them like most of the other bloggers do.

Well, that's certainly better than digging a deeper hole.

And yet when I look at the Currently Active Users box at the bottom of this forum I often see bloggers' handles there, both bloggers who post regularly on FT as well as bloggers who only very rarely do (Of course, now that I said this I imagine the latter will log out before lurking here. )

I can assure you many bloggers look, but are smart enough not to engage with the other party

Smart bloggers don't censor. All it does is destroy credibility.

Amongst the audience they are not interested in. I think you are mixing up your "smarts"

I am very happy to announce now hopefully I have one of the industry leading () comment policies which matches if not beats TBB's policies. I now an iron-clad best censorship guarantee (BCG) which is 10000x better than IHG's BRG.

I can now say I DO NOT CENSOR COMMENTS whatsoever. I do not classify any comment as SPAM, unless the website link in the comment looks suspect of a spam/malware link(and it is then removed by Akismet). I will allow all comments that are made by humans. Whether it trashes the post content, insults me, and is absolute junk is not an issue. As long as the links embedded within the comment are not spam/malware links, I will allow the comment. I have no problem AT ALL with that now.

When I started I actually felt very strongly about controlling comments. If it's my blog, why let negative comments dispel my happiness? But then I came to realize that the people who seem to leave comments have nothing ever to say. All they do is leave some sort of one-sentence crap in some variation of the form of Stop doing _____. For example, "stop copy and pasting your posts. Stop killing the deal. Stop killing the mistake fare."

I am happy to address any individual concerns that any reader may have about my content and what I can do to improve your reading experience. I hope that readers who do look at these comments realize the lack of depth they have and understand that EVERYTHING I DO is for the reader. I don't post controversial content and mistake fares to get more pageviews and credit card links. I post because I feel the content is enlightening and extremely practical (in the case of mistake fares) to viewers and as long as people benefit from them I will continue doing so.

Why do I not censor comments? Because while it's a slippery slope. First it's censoring "spam" because they have self-promotional links in their comment, and then on to censoring insulting comments, and then on to censoring non-constructive comments. Before you know it, your posts will only have four comments saying "Thanks for the work you've done. I love it!"

So I say to all the other bloggers who are here: Blog because you love to. Blog because it's a journey for you as well as for the reader. If people hate you, it's because you or your writing sucks. Improve it. If there are fickle comments left on blog posts that I'm sure you try your best on, so be it. Try and address them as best you can.

I am 14.5, according to milesmuncher and mr. pickles. If I, a hormonal teen can deal with all of this hatred and vitirol, so can you. Censorship achieves no goal except alleviating your short-term anxiety. Create an environment where everyone can learn and maximize their redemptions, and you will have readers. Create the very best content you can and be open-minded to feedback, and you will be fine.

TheMrPickles.com unpublished a valid comment of mine today. The author in question called a prior comment of mine as a word that could be considered profanity, and I quoted that remark in a much larger response.

The author has since deleted his response and as such, deleted my entire comment off the comments page. Thus, the blog should be moved from the "Does Not Censor" to the "Censors" list.

I can provide a screenshot for anyone interested.