10K Blog Candy! *** DRAW NOW CLOSED ***

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS DRAW IS NOW CLOSED. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.

Ok.. Here comes the long promised Blog Candy, to celebrate 10,000 + visitors to my blog since I started it four months ago. To all my visitors, thank you so much for taking the time to visit, and to all of you who leave your lovely comments... you are truly appreciated, even if I don’t get around to visiting you right back. If I haven’t been yet, I surely will at some point! :o)

This is not going to be your average draw, and will require some effort on your part (nothing toooo taxing.. just some reading and thinking), so I hope you will bear with me! :o)

For a full candy listing, see the next post, but this one gives you the rules of the draw, and is the one you should respond to.

Sorry about the length of the post, but I hope reading this will be worthwhile... :o)

This may be controversial, but I am going to use the opportunity to talk up my campaign against word verification on blog comments. You may call the blog candy offer an unashamed bribe if you will!! Lol.. But anyone with a blog can enter. It’s not a condition that you have to switch off your word verification. The only condition is that you give it some thought, and then if you decide to keep it, please tell me (politely!) why it is important to you. That will earn you ONE entry in the draw.

On the other hand, if you have already turned off word verification, or you do so as a result of my calling attention to it, and you tell me so (with a link to your blog, so I can visit you), you will get an additional entry.
If you also post about my blog candy in your blog, with a link back to me, AND you cut & paste my arguments below in your blog post (or post a sentence or two in your own words expressing your agreement), you will get FIVE entries. (Again, please give me a link to your blog post.)

Finally, if you are one of the winners of my Blog Candy Guessing Game (listed in the next but one post below), you will get an additional three entries.

I'm afraid this draw is only open to bloggers, for obvious reasons.

The draw will be at 7.00pm on 15th September.
OK.. I hope the rules are clear. If you’re not sure, please feel free to email me via my profile, and the best of British to you! :o)

..................................

ARGUMENTS AGAINST WORD VERIFICATION

Everyone will have their own view, but in my case, I regard the removal of word verification as a basic courtesy to my visitors who are kind enough to take the time to leave comments. Being aware of their comments through comment moderation, but not hindering them with word verification is the very least I can do to reciprocate their courtesy to me.

The problem with word verification is that it takes too long. The characters are very often hard to decipher, and it’s frustrating when you get them wrong and have to re-enter the little suckers!

So this campaign is on behalf of busy bloggers. Please spare a thought for the poor bloggers who work so hard at getting round as many blogs as possible to leave sprinkles of blessing and good vibes wherever they go. The terrible proliferation of this awful plague of word verification is a blight on their efforts to make the Land of Blog a cheerier place.

I think most people don't realise that they have word verification on their blogs by default, or how easy it is to switch it off, and perhaps not realising how annoying it is for other bloggers. Either that, or they’re under the misapprehension that they will be bombarded with spam messages. This is not the case. I’ve had mine switched off now for three of the four months that I’ve been blogging, and have had two spam comments. The responses I’ve had from other bloggers to my earlier posts on this topic back this up. (You can see the comments in response to my previous post on this subject, HERE.)

For safety’s sake, have comment moderation on for sure, but please consider canceling word verification on your blog. Maybe for a trial period, and see how you get on.

Unless there are thousands of comments being left, comment moderation shouldn’t be too much of an issue for the blog owner, and other bloggers will also be more inclined to leave comments if they can see that you don’t use word verification.

However, each to their own, and if you disagree with me, that’s cool. We can agree to differ and not visit each other’s blogs! lol ;o)

OK.. rant over. If you have read all the way to the end, thank you for putting up with it, and ~ obviously ~ do what you wish on your blogs, but I had to say something. I love to get around and leave comments, but word verification spoils the experience.

Of course, when I get my new job, all this will be academic to me, as I will then have a life, and I won't have time for much blog-hopping!! Not that blog-hoppers need to get a life.. Errr... think I'll stop digging now, before I get into REAL trouble!! lol ;o)

Peace. :o)

EDIT: Interesting link HERE, provided by sharp-eyed Sammi (thank you, hun!).. Seems that 'Captcha' (the technique for identifying whether input is human or computer) is of little value, if any, anyway, as spammers have software that can break it. In which case, comment moderation is your only defence. Completely backs up my case.