As many of you know, I started this blog to encourage open and honest communication about the dance and to give my dancers and their parents a bit of information about the much insulated and mysterious world we call dance. However, unfortunately, some events have thwarted that conversation.
When I set up this blog, my computer software engineer husband insisted that no comment be posted without my approval. This WAS NOT to eliminate negative comments from appearing on my site. As many can see, I have posted both negative and positive comments to almost every article and responded to every single legitimate comment I have received. I realize more than anyone that when you post your thoughts and opinions in a public forum, many people will agree with you and many people will not; that’s what makes for lively conversation which is what I wanted for my blog.
The filter was to prevent two things from happening. Number one, it was to avoid profanities being posted on my site. I myself use profanity often especially when I am passionate about what I’m saying, in fact, cleaning up my language was the biggest challenge for me when I started teaching full time. (There kids, you now know something personal about me that you did not know before.) However, I have young students that follow this site and I did not want them exposed to anything inappropriate. I simply filtered those comments, edited the profanities with asterisks, and posted them after they were edited.
Number two, it was to prevent my blog from being inundated with spam comments. In fact, this is what happened. It was about a week before I got my first spam comments, but at its most I had to slog through 500 spam comments daily to find one or no relevant comments for that day. It even crashed the site several times. This went on for months until my husband finally turned off all comments to the blog. I guess going through all that spam is well and good for a full time blogger, but for someone like me that teaches five classes a day at three different facilities and rehearses at night, it became overwhelming. Who knew Louis Vuitton, Coach and Nike were that desperate for advertisement?! There, I gave them some; that should make them happy!
Anyway, from now on and with great regret, I will leave comments open for one week after each post and then shut comments down once again. I am so sorry everyone; this is not how I wanted this blog to be. It is truly a shame that a handful of people can effect open communication to this extent. However, this is not going to stop me from writing what I feel to be good information for my students, parents and colleagues. I just want everyone to know that I highly value everyone’s legitimate opinion, positive or negative, that visits my blog and I wish the very best to all of you. Happy dancing!