I love our regular Sunday morning visit to one or more of the local farmers’ markets. Not just for the wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables, direct from the grower, but for the friendly chat with stall holders, the passing parade of locals in their weekend casual (i.e. daggy) clothes. And for the way the farmers help us to part with our money for the fruit, literally, of their labors.
I get special enjoyment – and education – from the signs.
What fascinates me is how basic, even crude some of the signs are. Not what a professional sign maker would provide, surely. But coming from a long line of farmers I know better than to accept the simplicity of what you see as indicating any lack of smarts.
Like the one above, which I photographed this morning at the regular stall of the man from nearby Crystal Creek, who from speaking with him I know is very smart and has a good sense of humor (he let slip one day he had been captain of his quite prestigious high school).
Observing what good business this guy does, week after week, I’m sure he could afford a beautiful, professionally made sign.
But then mightn’t we subconsciously or consciously wonder whether his bananas were really direct from the local farm, or trucked in from elsewhere? And whether we might get a better price at one of the stalls with signs less swish?
The sign from our man from Crystal Creek speaks to localness, freshness. In advertisingspeak, it is authentic.
I’ve got nothing against fancy signage, beautifully designed stationery and state-of-the-art websites.
But sometimes simple, “hand-drawn” can be very smart business.
Do you have an example of a sign or other visual representation which is “hand-made” but effective? Please leave a link.
Taking the Middle Ground on Comment Moderation
From what I’ve read on a number of blogs over the years, there is a discussion about comment moderation but it’s basically binary: you are either for it or “agin” it. There is in fact a third option, which is a modified moderation, a middle ground, if you will.
It’s right about then that a spam attack, masquerading as comments, comes along to bring me back down to earth.
Just now, a quick search on the subject reminded me that I posted about this back in March 2007 – Comment Moderation Turned on Reluctantly
I’ve just had another flurry of “comments” which fit that description.
So I’ve decided to keep moderation on, but not totally.
The middle ground position I mentioned above, and the basis of the policy and practice here, is that only the following comments are held for moderation:
The ability to do this, without having to watch the blog day and night, is provided by the excellent toolkit in WordPress.org blogs, under Administration -> Settings -> Discussion.
There are some basic “suspicion-inducing” elements for which you can set moderation in the “on” position, so to speak:
WordPress also makes it easy for the blogger to edit comments. I have started to do that with “harmless” comments that contain clearly spammy links, mostly quite irrelevant in terms of the blog post being commented on. As we have CommentLuv installed, the commenter already has a link back to his or her blog.
That’s why I say that, courtesy of these WordPress tools, I am able to have a middle ground approach on comment moderation.
This is the policy we have – displayed on the Comments Policy page and linked from the right sidebar.
To me this seems a pretty rational, not unduly restrictive approach to comment moderation. The comment stream is kept free of spam and once people have made one comment their subsequent comments are posted automatically. What’s not to like? I welcome comments and dissent, within the rules
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comment spam free zone badge by Suzie Cheel