New garbage policy

Blogging comes in all sizes and shapes. In Virginia a lively blogosphere exists which represents political opinion from A-to-Z, left-to-right, etc. A visit to Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll will offer the reader a smorgasbord of opinion, from liberal to conservative to surreal.

Some of the bloggers are clever. Some are good writers. And, some are up to no good...

Unfortunately, there are a few bloggers in Virginia who see blogging as an opportunity to harass, bully or at least annoy other bloggers with whom they disagree. Often their motive beyond being a thorough nuisance is to promote their persona by picking fights with bloggers they know have readers they could never reach on their own. Among their tactics such pests like to use the comments sections of those targeted blogs to wear out their welcome, then scream “foul” when they are asked to cut it out.

Whether they comment anonymously, or using their established pseudonyms, such bad actors add nothing to the debate. Nor do they wish to do so.

At SLANTblog I am happy to take comments from readers who agree or disagree with what I present here. I enjoy discussing political issues. I always have. But just as I would not discuss politics, or sports, or movies -- in person -- with a rude drunk whose motive is obviously to piss me off, or gross me out, I don’t feel obligated to engage the same sort of person on the Internet.

Now my patience has run out for allowing such rude pests to take up my time, or my space, at SLANTblog. That’s right -- my space.

So, to my readers I say this -- please feel free to comment to this post or any others. For now, I plan to continue to allow comments to go through unfiltered. But if those comments are deemed to be pure garbage, not only will I no longer feel called upon to respond to clutters of childish provocations, from now on I will empty such garbage out as soon as I see fit.

Regular readers, including those few who have provoked this post, know exactly who they are. From here on the bad actors mentioned above are free to spank their monkeys on their own blogs, maybe on some other blogs, but not here.