Dear reader,

I hope this explanatory and well-titled page finds you well, well-off, well-hung, and such and so on. I don’t wish to interrupt your rhythm but it’s been brought to my attention that certain readers’ comments have been erroneously flagged as spam. I’d like to take a few moments to explain the situation, if I may.

Let me begin by saying how appalled I am at the event and by offering my assurances that should this happen to you, you are not being singled out. Well, maybe, but you’d know well in advance of any comments being flagged. I shake my curmudgeonly fist in the air with the best of ‘em. You’d know.

To me, your feedback is golden manna from heaven with whipped cream and an indecent maraschino cherry on top. Because of this I promised myself that I would never impose the same draconian nonsense some sites do on their readers. The link that’s added below comments is, as far as I’m concerned, the right thing to do. It’s not much, but at least I can share the minuscule Google Page Rank that TCL has and, with luck, maybe a few interested visitors as well.

Unfortunately, TCL does not escape spammers’ attentions and, on average, the daily ratio for spam to genuine comments is about 10 to 1. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the value in a good penile enhancement product, but I feel it doesn’t really add to the conversation, you know?

To aid in my pursuit of slack, I installed an automated spam detection thingie and it’s been doing a pretty good job so far. Unfortunately, in every war there’s some collateral damage, and in my leisurely, hands-off war against spam I’ve had my first victim, a genuine commenter who somehow got flagged as a spammer. That’s so not cool. But luckily it’s currently the exception, not the rule, so I still think the spam thingie’s working pretty well. It might just need an occasional bitch slap.

Should you happen to find yourself in the unfortunate position of being branded a spammer by my blog, and you’re fairly certain that you’re not, please let me know right away so I can start warming up my slapping hand. You can use the comment form, email me: patrick@torontocitylife(dot)com, or try a nudge on Twitter. If you are a spammer, why not use the same methods to contact me for advertising options? I’m not above a placing a reasonably-sized ad on the site in exchange for a noticeable enlargement. Let’s talk.