Getty Images and anonymous comments: Two bits of Liberal England housekeeping

Embed from Getty Images

As soon as Getty Images allowed private users to embed their images free of charge, I have made free use of that facility. Sometimes I even based a post on one of their images.

For the past couple of days, Getty's images have not been displaying on this blog. All you can see is a notice saying the image is no longer available for use.

Except, when you go to the Getty site you find the image is still there and is still available for use.

I shall not embed any more Getty images until this glitch has been fixed. When it has been, a pig will appear above every time you read this post.

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Having a comments policy for your blog has always seemed a bit pretentious to me, particularly now that most responses to my posts are to be found on Twitter - you follow me here.

I have always deleted spam comments, and have become increasingly likely to delete posts that are rude about me or accuse me of bad faith.

Now I am becoming irritated by 'drive-by' anonymous posts that attack my views. They are 'drive-by' because the commenter is clearly not familiar with this blog. Have a look at the comments on my Stephen Lloyd post and my response to them to see what I mean.

You can stop people leaving anonymous comments, but that seems too restrictive. It's not that all anonymous comments are worthless: it's just that most worthless comments are anonymous.

So I will continue to allow anonymous comments but may be a little more trigger happy aboyt deleting them in future.

When Simon Titley ran a blog for Liberator he insisted that people gave their real names when commenting.

This caused outrage in some quarters, and it is true that there are people who have good reasons for remaining anonymous. It can also be a liberation: I enjoyed the years when no one knew that it was me who wrote Lord Bonkers' Diary.

But, more and more, I see why Simon did it.