Like others, I recently received a comment about an upcoming competition on  my “about” page. Like others, I feel that this is a curious way of advertising a competition with large monetary prize. Possibly unlike others, I also feel quite strongly about being contacted in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a very worthy competition, and had the advertising policy been better thought through I would be all for it.

I do feel quite strongly about only posting my own personal views on my site. I do occasionally get asked to post on particular subjects/sites/products, and in general I won’t, unless it fits with something I was going to say anyway. I also feel quite strongly about posting on subjects that have been covered ad nauseum by other people, unless I have something different to add.

All in all, that makes me quite tetchy when I receive comments like this. By not using the contact form, it means I have to decide whether to get quite stalinist with my comment deletion policy, or to give people some free advertising. Furthermore, by posting to multiple blogs, our collective readership get stung with the same old post multiple times.

I guess this is just all just a request for people to learn a little blog-etiquette- make the effort to contact people in the correct way, and don’t use blog comments to advertise!