Men and other anomolies of this blog

As this Broadway Women Talk blog grows, it is important that we understand the audience, the voice, the spirit of what this blog is all about...

First of all, I want to address the idea of men posting on this blog. There have been several posts by a man in our church who has asked to have them removed. I am not sure what all he has endured from you women, but it is enough for him to apologize and seek full removal of all his blog entries. I will do the removing and posting of his apology this morning.

So, as to the issue of men on the blog. They will most likely read the blog. I will most likely publish this blog address in the church's bulletin for the women who aren't on the email list. There is precious little we can do to stop them from reading this (barring threats on the homefront).

That said, it brings me to the issue of privacy on this blog. It's not private. There are various settings that can be set within Blogger to make it more private, but at this point, it is set up as a totally entirely public website. Read more if you want to know the "why's" behind this decision.

In light of the fact that anyone can read this blog and that most likely it is being archived by Google and other search engines, please follow these simple rules:

1. Do not ever post your last name.
Instead, post your first name and the first letter of your last name: sharon s., helen b.
This site will be "spidered" by the search engines and pages of it will be "indexed" in search engine results. The last thing you want is for some new employer to "google" your name and read about your depression or your weight challenges or your nasty divorce or your drinking or your inability to keep friends..... You get the picture, keep your last name off the site.

2. Do not post something that you wouldn't want the people in your life to read.
If an article or post on this blog has provoked something within you to want to share your personal story in a way that is best kept confidential - find another woman in this church with whom to share. Where can you find a woman like this?

* Tuesday Morning Break is full of them
* Care Groups - Wilf Richert, associate pastor can help you find the right one
* The front on any given Sunday morning - come forward for prayer and sharing
* Phone the church office - the church can arrange a meeting for you with a mature and safe woman with whom to share.
* Friday evenings - at some point, we will kick-start this idea and you'll have a chance to meet other women who are also seeking spiritual connection

3. Use a name we can recognize.
This blog is all about connection, openness and friendship. Using a name we can recognize when you post will help us all connect with you and will keep the site editor from kicking your post off of the blog.

If you logged in with a name that is not recognizable to the rest of the women in the church, like: tuttifrutti, then put your recognizable name at the end of your post. So, it will say: Posted by tuttifrutti, (content of my post), sharon s.

Any posts that come from "anonymous" will be deleted regardless of how good those posts are.

Because the blog is entirely open to the public, there are spammers who will be posting on the site. Their goal is to get a link to their own site on "record" within our site. They generally post to really old articles so that none of us are looking at that anymore. They want a link in our site so that search engines will recognize more "inbound links" to their website - they really don't care if any of us ever find their link or go to it. Having more "inbound links" is one of the more than 30 ways that you can increase your ranking in search results.

If you see a spam post, please notify the editor through another post comment. All comments are received in the inbox of broadwaywomen[at]gmail.com.

And now, reasons why this blog is entirely open to the public.
1. There are only a few options with Blogger as to how to set up this blog.

* by invitation only
* moderated comments (an editor approves and publishes your comments - not in real time)
* totally open to the public

By invitation only:
This greatly reduces the number of women who can read / post to the blog. Many women will not be able to either figure out the login process or be motivated to login. It is totally possible that we could have another blog that is by invitation / login only.

One of the goals of this website is to invite readers and writers of all ages in our church to connect with each other. On interactive sites such as this, it is normal and likely that most people will read and never post. Maybe more than 90% of people will never ever post anything. That is totally fine. The reading can be tremendously encouraging for each other as well.

I (Sharon) have received emails and comments about this blog from women of all ages in the church, even though the younger women are most active on the site (besides that one man).

Moderated comments:
This idea is ok. It means that the site administrator reads all the comments and either approves or doesn't approve them to show up on the site. At this point, I decided that more comments are better than less comments. Let's see what happens. We may moderate the comments at some point. I had them set this way originally, but had emails from women wondering why their post didn't go through.

Entirely open:
Seems like the best way to kick-start this site to make it most accessible, but does require some caution in posting.

Thoughts?