Blog Expansion

Until now this blog has been purely about Scientology. My viewpoints on other subjects were being posted to another blog. Trouble was, my attention was getting split between the two as well as with a couple of other blogs that I help out on. So I've decided to simplify and concentrate on this one. Therefore, I am expanding this blog to include my viewpoints on life, the universe and everything as well as reviews of movies, books, music and anything else I fancy blogging about.

My intention is to give you wonderful readers out there an idea of what Scientologists are like by presenting the viewpoints of a typical member of the species :)

If there are any topics you'd like to hear my two cents on then please post a comment and I'll see what I can do.

My policy on comments

In the past I've received complaints about the fact that I moderate the comments on my blog. I've been accused of stifling free speech and only allowing through worthless, censored pap. I've even had nasty comments that challenged me to post them and accused me of having no huevos if I didn't.

I actually did begin to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with moderating my comments, but to my rescue came Jeff Atwood. Jeff firmly believes that a blog without comments is not a blog. I subscribe to his blog and I recently came across a post called, "Finally, a Definition of Programming I Can Actually Understand" which begins with a discussion of the merits of allowing comments on your blog.

He doesn't moderate but he does "... scrutinize every comment, and I remove a tiny percentage of them: they might be outright spam, patently off-topic, or just plain mean. I like to refer to this as weeding my web garden. " So whilst allowing comments, he moderates the real bad stuff after the fact.

In his article he refers to Joel Spolsky (another guy whose blog I follow) who takes quite a different view, namely that comments are a waste of time and a distraction from the ideas that a blog post is trying to communicate. He quotes Dave Winer, who says that blogs should be the unedited voice of a person and that if you want to comment then get your own blog.

So, here I am being presented with two very convincing arguments: 1) allow comments, with minimal moderation and 2) to hell with comments. What should I do?

Decisions, decisions.

Well, as usual, I think the best route through this minefield is the middle road. Extremes tend to be ... well, extreme. So, my policy is to hit the middle road between the two and say: This blog is (as Dave Winer puts it) my voice and I will allow comments which I feel contribute to what I'm trying to say.

Questions are a different kettle of fish and I already have a policy on those (Questions about Scientology).

So that's my two cents on the subject. What do ya'll think about comments, the two extremes of handling them and my solution?

Subscribing to this blog

I have decided to use Feedburner for my blog feed. For those of you who are not very Internet literate, a blog feed is a file that is updated whenever a new article is added to the blog. A thing called a "Reader" or an "RSS Reader" monitors the file and whenever it is changed will inform you that there is more wonderful content to read.

People use all sorts of Readers: their My Yahoo page, Google Reader, iGoogle page, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Microsoft Outlook and many more. They use the reader to get news and also the latest words of wisdom from their favorite bloggers.

So if you want to get the latest posts from this blog then click here (My Scientology Blog Feed) and add it to your Reader.

According to the Blogger help, if you subscribe to the old feed, you should be redirected to the new one. How well that works, I don't know. So I suggest you switch to the new feed.

Patience is a Virtue

For everyone waiting for a comment reply, I can only apologize and plead extenuating circumstances. Life, the Universe and Everything is conspiring to make my life very busy just now, so you may have to wait till the weekend or even longer for a response. Part of the problem is that some of the comments are really loooooong. How you comment is up to you but please take pity on me and try to make them shorter. One suggestion is to keep a comment to one subject – not sure how workable that will be, but maybe you could give it a try. There are more of you than me and I have a limited amount of time to devote to the blog so every little helps. And do remember that Patience is a Virtue :)

Blog Redesign

I've been meaning to upgrade my blog to the latest style of template. The new Blogger templates are very easy to use and well thought out. My site had an old style template which was basically just HTML with special tags in it and I'd customized it, so upgrading looked like it would be a pain because I'd have to transfer everything over. But I decided to bite the bullet and just do it!

So here it is. I'll be working on the layout for a while to get it just right. Any suggestions for improvements are welcome.

Questions About Scientology

If anyone has any questions about Scientology then I am willing to answer them. Please post your question as a comment to this post.

My rules are:

• Questions should be asked politely.
• If a question is worded in an offensive, sarcastic or antagonistic way then you won't get an answer.
• If a question contains links to negative profiles or sites or to profiles or sites I don't like in some way then I may reject the comment, but I may give an answer to a reworded version of the questions which I will put in my answer. In other words you won't have to post it again.

After all, this is my site and I get to set the rules :) You can set the rules on your site!

(27 Jan 08 Addition) My original idea for this post was that I'd get a question: "What is abcde?" and then I'd post the answer "It is ghijk". Simple. However that's not how it's turning out. I'm getting long comments with several questions and lots of explanations and side comments. While I don't mind that at all, it sort of defeats the purpose of the page, which was to have short questions and answers. I don't want to stifle people, so keep asking questions however you like, but forgive me if I cut your post down to a simple "What is abcde?" so I can keep the page readable. If you have a questions that relates to a specific post on this blog then please make the comment on the page of that post.

(28 Jan 08 Addition) Wow, this post is proving to be popular. Please forgive me if I take a while to answer a question. I have other things I do in life too :). If you don't see an answer within a few days please be patient. I will get to you.)

(28 Feb 08 Addition) This page is getting loooooong and I don't think it is going to be very workable for people to see their answers here. So, ask your questions here and I'll post the answer as a blog article rather than as just a comment. Of course, you can always post questions and comments to specific articles and I'll answer them there, unless I think they are something that would be of broad interest in which case I'll also post them as a blog article.

Thanks again to everyone who has asked a question. Sorry if I'm slow in replying, but if you follow my guidelines I promise I'll answer eventually. Be patient :)

Questions About Scientology

I just found this site: Scientology FAQs. It has a lot of data.

Also, I am very willing to answer questions about my blog articles and about Scientology. I also welcome comments.

(I do moderate comments and I will reject angry, antagonistic, snide, obscene or offensive comments. So, let's just be friendly, open and demonstrate some manners. Random acts of Kindness are a great idea, so let's extend the idea to random acts of good manners :)

Cool Scientology Blog

I just found a blog by another Scientologist that I think is better than mine. I'm too busy to create long posts so most of mine are short with a link to what I'm blogging about. This guy (jetteroheller) puts more into his posts and also posts on techie type topics. Anyway, I started reading it and next thing I knew it was half-an-hour later.

He also has a list of blogs by other Scientologists: Scientology Blogs