Matt Mullenweg, of WordPress fame, is mad, and this time I’m not bitching about not giving designer credits in the upcoming (?) WordPress.com theme marketplace. No, this is even zanier.
You see, Matt recently published a post titled Top Emailers on his blog, listing the ten people that sent him most e-mails in 2007. Toni Schreider popped him 996 of ’em by the way, he tops it.
This is what he writes after the list:
Thanks to all those who played! Better next year to those who didn’t win.
There’s a “luck” missing there, but that’s not why I’m writing this post.
Matt’s no newbie to blogging, but it surprises me that he invites spam like this. The post might be a fun thing to do, but I would never ever even dream of it. I get enough e-mails already, without being mailbombed by the hordes of fanatic readers I might or might not have attracted to my work. Matt, having had his blog linked in WordPress up ’til version 2.3 (I believe), should have a fair share of these diehard people leaning to the obsessive side.
Wouldn’t they want to be on the 2008 list?
This isn’t such a big deal, really, but it brings into focus something we all need to consider when blogging. How much of ourselves do we put out there, and how wary are we of inviting others into our lives, digital or no?
As I said, I would never do anything to encourage people to e-mail me like Matt did. I don’t mind e-mails from readers, but they should be sent for a specific reason, not invited by a quirky blog post about who e-mailed me the most.
Again, this might not be a big deal, even for Matt. And he can always delete the flood of nutty mails that might follow the post. It might be worth it, he managed to get a link from Wisdump after all…
Still. How much you put out there, and how you choose to encourage readers, that is something you need to figure out. Call it reader policy if you will. Thoughts?
Originally posted on January 11, 2008 @ 10:00 pm