Site Rules

Rules of the Blog

If you are commenting or contributing there are only a few guidelines.

• Be nice.
• Be respectful.
• The odd swear is fine (used well it adds emphasis) just try not to do it too much. If it is funny it is fine. If it is an unnecessary string of angry swearing it’ll be moderated.
• There will be no trolling.
• If you want to be anonymous I’m sure you can think of a psuedonym rather than using the default ‘Anonymous’.
• This is a personal blog. It hosts my opinion and that of others, it hosts interesting things I find and want to share.
• This is not a content farm. I am not trying to ‘grow my website’. I don’t care about page views. I am not trying to ‘get my name out there’. I am not a ‘wannabe journalist’. I just want to watch racing and write about it sometimes.

Twitter Account

Somehow I’ve accumulated a lot of followers on Twitter.

• I use @toomuchracing to follow people who talk about racing. If I follow you based on that but you don’t talk about racing I may unfollow you without saying so. It isn’t personal.
• I don’t care whether you have 50 or 5000 followers.
• I won’t retweet your plea to reach an arbitrary number you’ve plucked from the sky. It isn’t a competition to reach the highest. But I will check my own number and hope it goes up. 🙂
• ‘Please RT for x,y,z!’ No. Stop begging.
• If you quote your follower count (or readership or listener numbers) as justification for an opinion, you’re an idiot.
  “Well I believe *this* and I have x followers/readers/listeners, so I must be right!”. No, you’re an insufferable fool.
  Yes, well-known people have done this with me.
• I’m not a journalist or a reporter but it is important to get things right. Mistakes happen incredibly quickly and easily in social media and I try not to rush on to bandwagons but it is very, very easy to do so and mistakes are made.
• I follow a lot of people who are journalists, reporters, writers and trusted link sharers and I retweet their work frequently.
• If I share a report or video or podcast you can assume I have read/watched/listened to the content unless I say otherwise.
• Similarly, if you’re expecting me to share something of yours, give me time to read/listen/watch.
• I type quickly.  I try not to flood your stream but it is easy to get carried away.
• Some people like live race tweet commentary, especially those who can’t see a TV screen. That said, I am trying to move away from telling you what has been shown on TV, a terrible habit.

Personal Twitter

I have a personal account too which isn’t about motorsport.

My thoughts there are my thoughts as if I were talking aloud with my friends or just my internal monologue. That might sometimes includes swears and forthright opinions.. and drunk tweets. And UK politics. If you follow that account I expect you to be able to handle that.

I’m more choosy who I follow there because it is ‘my’ account and not the one for the blog. Nothing personal.

Important!

I’m amazed how many people still don’t know this:

If you start a message with “@name”, only followers of both of you will see the message. It won’t appear in the main feed for everyone.
In a timeline and especially on an app, if you want all of your followers to see it you have to move the mention later in the message, not start the message with it. This is why people sometimes start messages with ” . “.