Many years ago, I worked at a restaurant where the general manager had installed a very professional looking Suggestion Box on a wall near the register. Whenever someone would come with a complaint, he handed them a very official looking form and directed them to the box which was clearly locked. One day he said, “Corporate didn’t ask me to do this – I save myself a lot of headache this way”, as he went to unlock the box. Every couple of weeks he’d empty the contents into the trash after checking to see if there was anything good. When Corporate eventually found out, they thought it was genius and offered him a promotion!
On a website, a form for contact or comments gathers a lot of spam and I’m remined of my old manager every time I delete a batch. My experience has been that nobody leaves comments on a self-hosted blog, anyway. So, I have closed comments on all but this page, and any entries will now be auto deleted weekly.
For the technical recipe on this, see: Remove Unapproved
It is very possible messages left here will not be read at all.
In recent years, there has been only one comment from IP 76.138.133.218 claiming to be “Everyone”, which I published only because I’m opposed to censorship. It was just one word, “Loser,” in response to Coffee Shop.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who wants to contact me legitimately and privately can send an email, or there is now a more public option with Bluesky. For those unfamiliar, Bluesky is the open source successor to Twitter once it became X. It is both federated and moderated with a focus on open communication. With over 40 million users and 1.5 million posts daily, there is a lot of left-leaning political content but also a very strong art and photography community. Server status and updates for this site are also announced there.
Follow and I’ll follow back. Currently sorting ~20,000 photos into albums.
Comments:
Got a complaint? Don’t want to contact me directly?
Use the box below.
Loser.