Dealing with Wackos

The general recommendation is to have some type of contact information on your blog.  That way a reader or potential advertiser can contact you directly without having to go the comment route.  At the same time it opens the gate for any wacko, troll or stirring the pot type to contact you as well.  For that reason, my suggestion is to always use a toss away email account like Yahoo or Hotmail.  Never put your good, personal email address online especially as a contact on your blog.  Ok, so yesterday I did get a wacko who thought it was quite appropriate to email me privately to ream me about my cooking blog.  I honestly had a few ways to deal with the first email - ignore, respond politely or tell the person where they could go and how they could get there.  I responded politely to which I received a nastier response to which I had the same three choices.  Again I responded politely with one simple sentence then proceeded to ban the person's IP.  If I receive any further communication from this person is will be forwarded to their IP with a cease and desist notice. 

The thing is as bloggers, it is our blogs, our ideas, our writing style, our time and our effort.  No one is forcing anyone to read our blogs so the bottom line is if someone doesn't like something on a blog they do not have to read the blog.  Pure and simple.  They do not have the right to ream the author of the blog nor do they have the right to make any kind of demands on the author.  The do not have the right to tell us how to blog or what to blog about.  They really don't even have the right to email us if we provide contact information.  As bloggers we do not have to put up with any abuse from anyone online with respect to our blogs. 

Should this happen to you the first reaction is anger but bite your tongue.  Choose one of the three options: ignore, respond politiely or respond telling them where to go and how to get there.  If you feel you cannot respond civally and politely then choose to ignore.  Hit delete and carry on.  If you want to open a dialogue with the person, keep it polite.  If the dialogue is going nowhere and that's rather easy to tell, end it without replying.  If the emails bothered you go to the email and get the originating IP.  Go to your stats and label that IP for tracking purposes then block the IP from accessing your blog.  Realize that an IP block is only a deterrant and a persisent problem maker can get around it if they know how but in most cases an IP block will be rather effective.  If the person for whatever reason makes you feel uncomfortable or threatens you or persists in annoying you complain to their ISP as well as the upstream provider.

Garden Gnome
©2009-2011