Add your comments, please

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Your comments are welcome, but I check them first

I know as much about Amazon as I do primarily because I have learned so much from other people. I would not have learned anything like as much purely from my own observations. I therefore welcome your thoughts on these issues, because there is always something new to learn. Of course, some people can be nasty or libellous and that's why I need to check comments before I allow them to post. I will sometimes allow the posting of comments that I don't like, if it suits me to do so. That puts me ahead of a lot of bloggers who won't allow any criticism whatsoever. Indeed, some bloggers don't allow comments at all.

You do not need to be a registered blogger to comment on my blog posts, though it is probably easier to do so if you are registered. Some bloggers only accept comments from registered bloggers but I allow anybody to submit comments. I prefer that you identify yourself in some way, be it your Blogger ID, your Amazon profile name or whatever, but I may nevertheless post completely anonymous comments.

You can also e-mail me

You can send comments by e-mail from my Blogger profile page, where there is an e-mail link.

If you are worried about security, you can always set up an e-mail account for public access, while keeping your existing e-mail account(s) for private use. In my case, my main concern is official snooping, so I set up a special e-mail account for job applications and related activity. In that way, if a government official demands proof of the jobs that I've applied for, I can open up that e-mail account for inspection without needing them to see my other e-mails. I doubt that I would ever be required to open up my e-mail account, but having it separate from my other e-mails sets my mind at ease. Also, if I come across a suspicious official, I tell them what I've done and they sense that I'm telling the truth, so it might act as a deterrent if they are thinking of investigating me. They may decide to pick on an easier target, but if not, then I am better prepared than most benefit claimants for whatever comes my way.

In the same way, you can set up a separate e-mail account to relieve you of whatever fears you have. If you do set up a special e-mail account for public access, remember that Amazon allow you to have two e-mail addresses. Put your public e-mail account on your Amazon profile page, leaving your main account e-mail as it is, remembering to tick the box saying you want Amazon to remember both.

Allegations better sent to me by e-mail

I regularly hear about allegations regarding particular authors or reviewers and I am sometimes able to help with researching such cases. Because such allegations may be libellous and because people can ask Google to alert them to new posts about themselves, I cannot allow these to show up as public comments, and it is difficult to respond to comments that I cannot post. Because of this, I urge you to send allegations by e-mail. You probably won't be telling me about a new type of allegation, as I've probably come across something similar before, but I'd still like to hear your story. You may have spotted a particular case that is worth investigating. Even though there are likely to be similarities with previous cases, there may be new twists on old themes.

Nasty comments

I expect to reject most of these, since most of the points they make can be made in a more diplomatic way. When I allow nasty comments to go public, it will almost always be so that I can respond to them. The best example from the past came when somebody noticed that I had posted a lot of reviews and also noticed that I was unemployed (which I still am). It was a particularly nasty comment, but summed up a widespread attitude towards unemployed people. I therefore allowed it to post, responded to it and added another thought a few days later. Eventually, I decided to provide a more detailed analysis in my political blog. I thought that was the place for it and I was right, but subsequent events have shown that readers of this blog (who are not usually the same people) are sometimes interested too and I have included the page here too, with a different title and some other modifications, as Unemployed Amazon reviewer. So there is an example of somebody sending in a particularly nasty comment that I posted, replied to twice and then set out a detailed analysis that is now on two different blogs. The original exchange can also be found on my Central hub Welcome page. That is an extreme case and likely to remain uniquely so, but it shows that I do sometimes allow nasty comments to show up, however rarely that may be.

Although not responses to blog posts, I have reproduced some nasty forum comments elsewhere in this blog, if only to show that I can cope with them.

Please comment on the blog post that your comment relates to

This sounds obvious, but it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes people continue reading other posts then comment on the earlier page wherever they happen to be, while at other times people may compile a file of comments then post the whole lot together, which is fine in an e-mail but not suitable for public blog posts. I will accept such comments but may subsequently move them to their correct place, which may mean splitting them up and that all takes time.

Error corrections

We all get things wrong, myself included. For reasons set out in my blog post Facts and opinions, I probably make proportionately fewer mistakes than most when it comes to Amazon issues, but I make them. Amazon may also make fools of us by changing the software so that an established truth is no longer true. Most of the errors I make are actually typos, although I have spent a lot of time trying to weed them out of this blog.

So I am happy to receive error corrections although I would prefer them to be sent as e-mails. If you MUST send them as comments, please keep them in separate comments from other thoughts you may have. My normal procedure would be to post the comment containing the error correction, correct the error if I agree that I am in error, post a reply saying either that I've corrected it or why not (so that you get an e-mail if you've asked to track the response) then delete both the comment and my reply after a suitable time interval, as they are now superfluous. Obviously, that procedure is more complicated if you have mixed up error corrections with other comments. In such cases, I may delete the comments totally, or I may move them into my part of the blog page and edit them.

I occasionally move comments into my part of the blog page

This can happen for a variety reasons noted above. When I move comments in this way, I tidy up the formatting and correct any spelling errors that I see, as I take responsibility for them. On this blog, you'll find an example at the foot of Attitudes to Amazon reviews and reviewers. This comment originally appeared on my "Amazon topics" header page that no longer exists, its contents having been moved to other pages or deleted. There wasn't a page about attitudes when that post was made, so the header was the right page for it at the time.

Although it hasn't happened yet, there may be cases where I want to keep part but not all of a comment and the only way to do that is to move it into my part of the blog page, edit it and delete the original. I cannot edit original posts that are not mine, although I can delete them.