If rudeness goes unpunished (out of charity), others may interpret it as a sign that it’s all right to be rude when it is not. In essence, you are opening your house to a big online party; no one is being forced to stay against their will, and rude guests who come in and complain about the food shouldn’t be surprised when they are shown the door and told why. That is what you’re doing with your fishpan posts. They also serve as a valuable object lesson on what behavior is or isn’t tolerated, and are often very informative in themselves. (It was interesting to find out about your Alexa rankings, for instance.)

On the other hand, I’m very uncomfortable with the way regular readers take these occasional rants as a signal that it’s ok for them to pile on the original offender.

This is a great community as evidenced by number of comments generated by each post, and the conversations that take place in the comments. MM readers listen and respond to each other, an aspect that is enough of a rarity on the blogosphere to be worth noting. Commenters are also great at reminding newcomers what is acceptable behavior. So when the rare Fishpan Award posts show up, it seems to me that the public naming and shaming is punishment enough (and makes the point clearly enough), and all the other commenters chiming in to say, basically, “Way to go, MM! Offender, you suck!” are not actually adding anything constructive to the discussion. It reminds me of someone getting kicked when he’s already down, even if his actions were what led to the fall in the first place.

Other commenters have written to express the same concerns. This may be a minority point of view; I submit it nonetheless as food for thought, if nothing else.

If I had one suggestion to make, it would be to close the comments on posts like these. (This does not hold true for experiences with bad customer service, for example, where commenters can and do compare experiences and swap tips and contact numbers and details in order to resolve such problems.)

And while I’m at it, thank you for providing such a wonderful blog to so many of us in the Philippines and elsewhere.

This is why I have this site bookmarked!

Fishpan! Fishpan! Fishpan!