The cage match is still ongoing, and while yesterday I mentioned that the comments were getting a bit caustic they’ve since become even more so. I don’t much care if people are nasty to me; I see that sort of thing in Amazon.com reviews or blog reviews all the time and I don’t much care. Truth is, you can’t be raised the way I was raised and still be all delicate when someone tells you how much you suck. I have some thick calluses over those spots.
But now it’s started between commenters, and that sorta sucks. The truth is, there are a lot of readers out there who haven’t been exposed to R. Scott Bakker’s books and would like them, but not if his current readers treat them with condescension and contempt.
Here’s a general guideline I would like people to follow: If you like a particular author’s books and someone unfamiliar with them suggests that the description so far makes them sound kind of dull? Please PLEASE do not start the “… displays an ignorance and shallow judgment that frankly says you’re not worth [author]’s time as a reader anyway” stuff.
If you like a book or book series, do not try to drive away readers you consider unworthy.
Jesus.
Anyway, Ray is losing by a narrow margin. Voting ends on Thursday 5pm EST, so if you want to vote for him please do. I’d like to win the match so he faces Tyrion in round 2–I have a couple of fun ideas for that.
If he doesn’t win, no big. That just means I’ll have more time to put into my new book this weekend.
Finally, I turned comments back on as a trial run, but the spam has been piling up in the spam filter. That’s what it’s supposed to do, obviously, but it’s very time-consuming to search through it for ham, and I’m unlikely to leave comments on for long. Sorry.
Why not just add a warning to the comment block by the name/email fields that sometimes comments will sometimes get erroneously spam-trapped… then stop looking for false positives.
Everyone on the internet understands that spam is a hassle and sometimes dealing with it is too much. I think most of us would rather you write or enjoy your life than spend time looking at that crap.
+1 to Dom’s mail,
PS, want to buy some ‘enhancements’?
As a commenter myself, I know how frustrating it is to type up a long comment full of wisdom and insight that will certainly change everyone’s life for the better, only to have it vanish unseen. That sucks. I’d rather close comments and restrict my interactions to LiveJournal and Twitter than have that happen.
Also, if I were the type of writer who could do two thousand words an hour, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But I’m painfully slow and I have to shave time everywhere just to get my work done. I mean, Charlie Stross deals with much, much worse. I could never manage it. and I could never manage John Scalzi’s legitimate comments, let alone the spam. I don’t know how those guys do it.
Don’t make me sic Akismet on you.
I hate your face! (jk)