Friend Or Foe?

Sorry for any inconvenience that we have created by taking certain options for making a comment off the blog site.  We will try to sort it out where it will be easier as soon as we can figure out how to accomplish that. If you send me a comment via email I can no longer cross post it to the blog site. As far as I know comments can still be posted via the blog but not by anonymous.   

The reason we had to resort to this is because we were getting comments from some where in Russia at the rate of 30 in 15 minutes  posted under anonymous.  We have also had problems in the past like the woman (?) who wrote from Miami saying out dog looked like the one that was stolen from a friend of hers in Miami.  She claimed to be helping track the dog down.  When we informed her ours was adopted and the rescue had been in touch with the original owner and Bozwell could be tracked to the pet store he was purchased from as a puppy, the extortion stopped and she then wanted a contribution to help defray the cost of trying to locate the dog.  Nope, that didn't work either and she crawled back in her hole when she realized we did not just fall off the turnip truck.

Or the rotten comments we get that use profuse profanity and are fabrications or lies and vicious personal attacks.  They are deleted immediately.  When you do a blog you seem to attract nut cases like the time a woman stole a photo off our blog pertaining to a birthday party we had.  She used the photo in an attempt to demean our friends and us by weaving a fabricated story around the photo.  When you do a blog you have to remain constantly vigilant and having to erase 180 comments a day from Russia and elsewhere is the reason we had to take radical action.  The rest are easier to deal with but there are those who try to prey on legitimate blogs  and I'm sure also try to sabotage and undermine topics on Mother Earth News as well. They are pretty watchful and delete those crazy comments from nut cases.  I suspect they get a fair amount of them because on occasion I get a forwarded comment or reference  from my assistant editor.  

To dwell into the mind of people who actively do this is a wasted effort. Even if you could get into their mind you probably wouldn't like what you found.   The best we can do is take corrective measures and try to keep it at a minimum. Hence we have changed the format for making a comment.  If you send me a comment via email I can no longer post it to the blog site until we figure out how to do that again. We have traced some comments to their source but there is really nothing you can do because they just use another venue or fictitious name  to mess with us.  I do not believe that we are alone in getting these type comments - or I hope not anyway.  For every legitimate blog there are dozens of predators to harass or try to extort something. There are some real weird cases out there folks who hide behind anonymous just to create problems.  

We enjoy doing the blog and having it as an adjunct to my blogs on Mother Earth News.  Regretfully it attracts some low life bottom feeders whose mission in life is to try to disrupt others lives.  We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause readers who follow our blog.  We are averaging between 400-500 readers per week and try to keep our topics interesting.  If anyone has a request for a topic on our lifestyle please let us know and we will try to accommodate your request as long as it is not a unreasonable one which we frequently receive.  Presently we are spending our time outdoors taking advantage of the good weather in order to reduce our wildfire hazard which takes away from blogging time.