It's only Thursday, and yet, I have had a tough time blogging this week. Monday was uncertain because of the storms and uncertainty that I would even have power to fire up the 'confuser'. We did have the lights go out, but thankfully, nothing of blogging importance was lost.
Tuesday, I began having problems with Firefox. There had just been a new version released and I thought maybe it was the problem I was having with PayPerPost pages reloading and reloading. It would begin on that site, and then continue on any I visited afterwards. The solution turned out to be that I had to run FF in safe mode to see if it was an add-on causing the problem, and to make a long story short, it was. I think it might have been the eQuake add-on, but I can't be certain.
I finally got that fixed so that I didn't have to keep switching between IE7 and FF, but in the process, I had posted a couple questions in the Firefox forum, which got me noticed by someone who took exception to my signature in there. It reads like this:
You are always welcome at
iPentimento and my other blog Pentimento. If you like what you see, please subscribe! Thanks for visiting!
Today, I got a personal email from someone saying, "Please remove the link to your commercial site
from your signature. There are those who consider that kind of
advertising in these forums to be off-topic spam and therefore in
violation of the rules."
I replied politely that I didn't have a commercial site and that it was just two blogs, asking what made them commercial. (I try to keep my own original content equal to, or more than, any ads, etc.). I sincerely thought I was doing OK, and considering all the other blogs I see with the same amount of ads, etc., I don't consider them commercial either. His reply was, "You mean other than "get paid to review my post" and the host of advertising?"
I really had better things to do today, but I did send him a reply: "Both of my blogs always have more original content than advertising. If you looked at the posts on iPentimento this week alone, you will see that the majority of them were non-paid. If there is any advertising on my blogs it is there to help provide extra income for me since I am disabled. I try very hard to infuse both my blogs with quality content, and I think your accusation is unfounded. Are you someone official with the forums, or just offering your opinion?" (I see he is a "Moderator").
At this point, I don't know if I am right or wrong. If I am breaking some rules, I am not aware of it. I haven't heard anything back, but I would bet money that he never actually looked at any of my other posts on the two blogs. Some people have nothing better to do than be a pain.
UPDATE: Well, the last missive came through about 5 minutes ago. Here is his reply to mine:
I am a MozillaZine moderator and have been for over three years. I did not look at the posts on iPentimento. I only took an initial look at the front of the site. It seemed to be mostly advertising and most of that is "here's how to make money doing whatever on the Internet...." I was asked by another forum volunteer to take a look and contact you about the link in your signature.
I'll tell you what I will do. Leave your signature alone for now. If we (the moderators) get another complaint about the content, I will let you know about the then multiple complaints and we'll discuss how to rectify the situation. Fair enough?
I replied, "Seems fair enough to me.
I do hope that those who complain about blogs will actually take the time to look at them thoroughly, not just make snap decisions and then report them."
Maybe I just don't like being told what to do.... What really irks me is that this all came about because I was asking for help with the Firefox browser.
