The Columnist Manifesto

I previously promised to be more interactive with comments, but I don't think I've really delivered. Some people are really good at that. They treat their comments sections like a garden, and their commenters are flowers that need to be tended. Phantom Scribbler, for instance, has cultivated dozens of "perennials" who flower in her comments section on a weekly or daily basis.

I'm not good at gardening, either in real life or here on the blog. And I'm somewhat deterred by the fact that I'd need to do some weeding of the dozens of spam comments that sprouted in my old posts before I activated word verification. Should I go through my archives and delete them all?

Or maybe I should reply to them:

Anonymous spam commenter: "great Blog. I have found a site you may find useful with information on cheap europe package travel at cheap europe package travel"

My reply: "You, sir are a butthead. And the travel packages at your link are not cheap at all. They're rather expensive!"