The other day as I was roaming the Blogosphere I happened upon a blog that mentioned something called ‘Black Friday‘. Being an Australian I had no idea what Black Friday was, for all I knew it could have been some Satanic ritual that was performed some weeks after Halloween, and so I left a comment asking what Black Friday Stood For? As it turns out the owner of the blog must have followed me to this blog, read my post What Type Of Commentator Do You Aspire To Be ? and left a reply on his post insinuating that I was an obnoxious commentator? I replied pointing out that in no way was that an accurate inference citing the facts that;

• I was not a robot and so did not fit the Robotic Commentator category.
• As my comment was longer than his post I also didn’t fit the Hit And Run Category
• Lastly I didn’t leave a spam link so I wasn’t a ‘Spam Link King!’

I then went on to explain how I was an Australian and was generally interested in knowing the origins of Black Friday. I did point out that I had noticed he provided some sort of link but I thought it was a good excuse for a comment and that he wouldn’t mind the interaction. Well that was it. Apparently I had put on some tone and he was only replying in kind.

This all brought to mind my post on Commenting Etiquette where I made the analogy of a blog being a person’s home and how we as commentators should keep that in mind and act accordingly. I then thought how we, as blog owners, are inviting these commentators into our home as guests and we should therefore treat them as such. What does this mean? Basically, there are two very important points we should keep in mind.

1. Be Civil: You are the host, so act like one. At all times you should be polite to your guests even if they can sometimes be a little rude. As a blogger we have the opportunity to take the time to think about how we are to respond to any comments left.
2. Do Not Assume: Making assumptions will usually lead to one party or another putting their foot in their mouth. As bloggers we should remember that we will get guests from all over the world, people who honestly do not know what the hell ‘Black Friday’ is and if they ask for some sort of clarification in a post, we as hosts should supply that. For stuff sake, soliciting comments is what we aspire to so don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The thing is that we are all human and are prone to mistakes. There may well be a time when we forget ourselves and we are less than perfect hosts. When that happens take the higher path and admit that you are wrong and make amends. Don’t be like the blogger at the beginning of this post, who upon finding out that he had erred, rather than apologizing and setting things right, had actually deleted all the comments that made him look bad.

Oh, in case you are wondering I actually asked Mitch, who by the way has done a very interesting series on Book Writing, what Black Friday was all about and he explained it as being the Friday after Thanksgiving which was the busiest shopping day of the year, so busy that a lot of the retail business made enough sales to go from the red into the black.

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