Comment moderation off

This is a bit of a ramble, so bear with me.

I know very well that I pay too much attention to what other people say. A few weeks ago I began moderating comments to this blog after I was bothered by the false statements of a certain contributor. Though I do receive certain anonymous comments that nobody would publish, plus spam, plus well-meaning queries that don't belong in my blog (which I reply by mail when possible), I set up moderation specifically because I didn't appreciate having lies about me published in my own space. Once published, I can only either delete the comment (which is easy to misinterpret, and which I find distasteful) or reply to it. The problem with certain lies is that it takes much longer to refute them that it does to tell them.

This blog is open to questions and, to some point, to discussion and debate, but it's not a forum. That I'm exposing myself by publishing it doesn't mean I'm putting myself up for discussion. This is a "content" blog, not a "me" blog (uhm... except for this post). In general, I even try to make personal posts useful by including at least some information that may be useful for the public.

Since you, the readers, don't really know me personally, you can't know for sure that I'm not filtering out a lot of negative comments. Maybe, you might think, my opinions are being refuted and my facts are being denounced as false by commenters that never get published because I censor them. I'm aware of that, and I only resorted to moderation because I have a long experience of being exposed to criticism by people whose opinions I don't care for at all. Long ago I tried to justify myself to idiots all the time. I'm a bit slow, but I've learned.

The truth is, my friends, I don't feel I need to acknowledge negative comments that have no backing or that are plainly false. If you come and say "You're a flip-flopper, your opinions contradict themselves", well that's a pretty serious accusation, and I won't publish it unless you show me how it's true. If you write "Your blog shouldn't be taken seriously at all", I consider that an insult — because I'm serious about it most of the time, and you can easily tell when I'm joking or exaggerating for effect. Yes, I'm not patient, and I'm oversensitive — mea maxima culpa. So what? You have the right to leave your comments and I have the right to throw them away if I feel you're making me waste my precious time. I'm sure most of my readers feel the same about their own time.

As I said, I tend to take other people's opinions into account too much, and this post is a result of that. The lady who writes miraquetemiroyo (which I regularly read) posted some thoughts about comment moderation where she concludes that comments are not useful at all for some kinds of blogs, such as hers, so she's turning them off (you can reach her through e-mail). However, she starts by complaining about people who moderate, in general... though it only takes a paragraph to see that she's speaking about me. She claims that moderation is fascist, and concludes that I have some terrible character flaw, so therefore she won't read my blog anymore. I don't get it. I get it even less since she herself said (two months ago) that D for Disorientation was "interesantísimo" and there should be more blogs like it. Maybe comment moderation was a mistake, but I doubt it was such a big mistake.

Anyway, since it was meant as a temporal measure, I'm setting moderation off. As a test, I'll let anyone publish anything for a few days (though of course I reserve the right to delete anything as well). If you want to communicate with me directly or off topic, leave a comment with your e-mail address (mask it in some way to avoid spam), and I'll get back to you if appropriate.