I’ve been blogging for over two years now, first at LiveJournal and Blogger, and for the last year here at WordPress. I love WordPress because of the community; the thing I enjoy most about blogging is the conversation you have with your readers and other bloggers, a dialogue rather than a monologue, and WordPress represents that better than any other blog host.
So as part of that conversation, your comments are extremely valuable to me. But I thought I’d better lay down a couple of guidelines for commenting so people know what to expect. The first thing is that I don’t edit comments people have made unless they ask me to and usually only to correct spelling errors. The reason is that though you’re submitting your comments here, I still consider them to be your intellectual property and I respect that. The only exception is if they are comments which I deem offensive and I will edit or delete them in that case. So you know, I don’t consider something like coarse language offensive, but a personal attack is and that will get your comment deleted.
I support both the Responsible Commenting Initiative and Tim O’Reilly’s Bloggers’ Code of Conduct, as well as the general rules of netiquette. Going along with that, I moderate the first comment someone makes on the blog, but once the first comment is approved your future comments won’t be moderated. So please don’t abuse my trust.
I try to reply to every comment I receive, usually inside the comment so it’s more personal. The only problem with that is you might not always see my reply, so don’t forget to check back! Also, as I’m in Sydney and a lot of my readers are overseas, it can take me a while to reply with the time difference; sometimes a few hours, so if you don’t see a reply right away please don’t think I’m ignoring you - I’m probably just asleep or really busy.
Other than that, feel free to leave a comment and join in the conversation. That’s what blogging is all about, after all. Look forward to seeing you round. 
