Just want to let my regular readers know that I’m going to have to start monitoring and approving comments for the foreseeable future. I haven’t done that since the very first year of this website. I’ve allowed people to comment freely, and I’ve had almost no spam or unacceptable trash in those comments. However, the past two weeks I’ve had a number of totally off-the-wall and trashy things posted in my comments section — things totally unrelated to the post itself.
So, although 99% of my visitors are still very dependable when it comes to reasonable and polite comments, I don’t want to give opportunities for these few “crazies” out there to post things that would confuse or even offend readers in general. As most of you know I am not a “politically correct” journalist, so the problem has nothing to do with political correctness. It has to do with comments that are ludicrous or trashy — or are obvious attention grabbers in order to lure people to the commentor’s site. I think it’s time I put up a shield and start standing guard for a while.
Sorry about this change, and I hope those of you who comment for the right reasons will continue to comment a lot. I’ll try to stay on top of approving them as quickly as possible.
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The Happy Wordcrafter 
Dogs are man’s best friend, or are supposed to be! But some folks can be ‘bad dogs.’ So sad.
Totally agree. My first-time posters have to be seen by me first. That helps, somewhat. It’s the second time you have to watch out for. 😦
Yes, and some of these people have posted previously, so they would be allowed to post according to my old settings. In fact, the second year on here, I started allowing anyone to comment without prior approval — knowing I could always delete something if I needed to. I never had any problems at all. But lately, I’m seeing numerous bad comments, and sometimes I can’t catch them until the day is about gone. When I think that for 4 years, I’ve had no problem at all, it really stinks to see just 2 or 3 people mess things up now.
I’m also having a real glut of dodgy, so called followers recently, these people really should get a life.
Yes, I’ve had that too. A lot of them have been some kind of business type site that probably just wants the attention, but some have been downright weird. They’re mostly all brand new. Some of them I’ve removed from my “follower” list immediately, and some I’ve given a couple weeks to see if they’re really a legitimate blog that is slow getting started. But the ones that seem really questionable, I remove immediately. Of course, they can “follow” me again, but only one has done that. I removed them the second time.