Mea culpa - I'm figuring this out

Just home from a night outside the Grid - Arco Arena for the Hives concert. I mean, for the Maroon 5 concert.

I had a good time, and I will write about it later, but I have a mea culpa to register with you, my larger-than-expected gang of readers.

In reaction to a couple of nasty comments early on, I made comments to this blog "moderated" - which meant I had to approve comments before they were posted. But as a friend pointed out to me tonight, it is perhaps contrary to the open nature of the internet to do so. I was perhaps a tad sensitive.

I'd gotten out of the habit of taking shit off of strangers. I certainly was used to it when I was writing for The Bee - some days, you get it just for showing up to work there, and doing your job. People have a BIG attitude about The Bee, and any big media. As pop music critic, I was hardened. (Hell, I got a death threat my first day in my full time gig at The Bee because I criticized Jimmy Page's guitar work in The Firm. 'Nuff said.) Lately, though, not so much. And frankly, my feelings were a bit RAW when I started this, in the aftermath of my Bee exit.

But as my friend said, "People don't want to be talked at," and I can see that. More to the point, people want to dialog, and that's what this is really all about. What I'd really like to help create with this blog is more of an online community in Sacramento, which was already going on just fine without me. I want to be a part of it, I want to spur it, and I want to learn from it. I'm already learning quite a bit.

So, I have disabled the comment moderation feature. I'm still not dying to be mocked, sneered at, or threatened, but I've had all of those before, and they were no big deal. Better to have the free flow of information really free than my feelings artificially protected. I'd like this to stay civilized, that is, interesting, but I'm open to loose cannons. This could be a big party, and they will make it fun.