Mailvox: you are not excused

Mr. Rational complained about his disappearing comments:

“Censoring again?  Shame on you.”

To which I replied:

“I’m not
censoring anything, you moron. If you hadn’t tried to comment
anonymously here at some point, your comments wouldn’t get spam-trapped
from time to time. As was the case here. Learn to ask questions before making an ass of yourself with false assumptions.”

Prompting this response:

“Well, excuse me for thinking that when a comment

(a) is posted without any links or other spammish content,
(b) appears on the post page as I reload it, and then
(c) disappears some time later while subsequent comments appear down-thread,

“it is through the intervention of someone after the fact. Because that is exactly what I have observed on multiple occasions, and absent any other information it is the logical conclusion.”

The point isn’t whether Mr. Rational had some justification for suspecting I was censoring his comments or not, but rather, instead of asking, he immediately leaped to a false conclusion and made an accusation on that basis. As it happens, the comment behavior he observed is EXACTLY what happens when Blogger spam-traps a comment.

Which is in fact, happened to his comments, which I subsequently found in the spam-trap and despammed. I didn’t delete his comments the first time, when he repeatedly posted the same comment about Fukushima again and again and again.  And I didn’t delete his comments this time either.

One can be excused for harboring suspicions. But if you’ve got suspicions of your comments being deleted for one reason or another, just ask me. If I decide delete your comment for one reason or another, I’m entirely willing to tell you why I did so.

As a general rule, before one starts running around and wagging one’s finger at people and crying “shame on you”, it is wise to first confirm that they have, in fact, engaged in the behavior one finds shameful.