Housekeeping

I just wanted to make a couple of quick points about the system of leaving comments on this blog. I've been away on holiday for a couple of weeks (I tried to arrange some posts in advance so you wouldn't notice) and on my return I notice that this blog has been flooded with comments that Blogger has picked up in its (rather good) spam filter. These comments are all of a similar style — effusive in their general praise for my blog, but reluctant to specify any details, and always advertising some other website as well. Now it may be that I have a particularly enthusiastic fan who writes in broken English, but more likely the spam filter is doing its job very well. Therefore I won't reinstate those comments.

However, I noticed that the spam filter also picked up a few genuine comments as well (since reproduced here). Generally speaking I don't check the spam filter so such comments could remain lost forever. So if you are a real person trying to leave a comment on a post but you don't see it appear, you should try to (a) make sure your comment addresses the content of the post and not simply some vague generalities, (b) avoid gratuitous plugs for irrelevant websites, and (c) not suspiciously post and delete too many comments in too short a time. In case your insightful contribution is still lost to the æther, explain the problem on here and I will try to reinstate your comment.