I think I should explain what happens with these.

Your comments are a delight, whether laudatory, neutral, or critical. I also get a lot of spam, and would get more if I didn’t take certain steps. These unfortunately have slight impact on every legitimate commenter.  I’m sorry for that, but if you could see the garbage I have to take out every day, you’d see why.

• Unless logged into WordPress (as in, you have a blog there, or you signed up), one must leave an e-mail address in order to comment. If you prefer to make one up, that’s cool, I don’t care. I respect your privacy.
• If it is your first time commenting, the comment stays hidden until I ‘approve’ it.  I’ve never not ‘approved’ one from someone who sounded remotely legit, but it will wait until I get there. Much as I dislike having you wait, this is the primary shield against Big Tons O’ Crapola. I try to do this more often than daily. After the first one, no approval is needed–future comments appear without my action.
• When you comment, if I know you, please help me out by including enough about you (such as first name and last initial) to know it’s you. I plan to reply, so it’s nice to know who said howdy.
• WP has a spam filter that catches the junk quite well. It works from a list of e-mails and IPs. However, if you and I aren’t really acquainted, and your comment doesn’t seem specific to the post (“Hi! This is such useful information–thank you!”), I could mistake your comment for spam. Lack of context is a big tell on spam. So, if you’re new to The ‘Lancer, a little context goes a long way toward helping me distinguish.
• I don’t have any admonitions about what people say.  Never needed any. We’ll cross that bridge if and when we encounter it, but it seems everyone who does me the kindness of being a reader has common sense. It is dumb to tell sensible people to do sensible things they are already doing, or to tell sensible people not to do nonsensical things they are not even contemplating. I try not to be dumb.

Thank you for being a reader! Your time and attention are their own form of subtle praise.

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Tags: manuscript editor, fiction editor, non-fiction editor, freelance editor.