Effec­tive imme­di­ately, I’m insti­tut­ing a new com­ment pol­icy for this blog. Before I explain it to you (it’s really sim­ple as there are only three rules), let me give you the rea­son why.

I’m see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of com­ment spam lately. Not the usual, software-​​driven kind — Akismet and Dis­qus do a won­der­ful job to keep those at bay. But the ones that look, on the sur­face, as legit­i­mate comments.

Legit­i­mate, they are not.

They are faux com­ments mask­ing as real ones for the express pur­pose of siphon­ing traf­fic. Called “friendly com­ment spam,” they are typ­i­cally sim­ple, often just a sen­tence or two, and most of them are generic, irrel­e­vant, and com­pli­men­tary in nature.

Believe me, I love praise like most peo­ple. But just say­ing “nice blog” (or “nice arti­cle,” “nice post,” “good job,” “love this post,” etc) does not con­sti­tute a com­ment. They are not con­tribut­ing any­thing to the con­ver­sa­tion, or any­thing of value to my readers.

I talked about this on Twit­ter and on Face­book, and while most peo­ple agreed with me, some were opposed. One per­son said that many of these com­men­ta­tors are aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and that I should be grate­ful for such a problem.

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Some peo­ple tend to tweet, blog, post, and status-​​update their lit­tle hearts out. Be it on Twit­ter, Face­book, LinkedIn, MySpace, their own blog, or what­ever. They say it’s all about trans­parency, and trans­parency is good.

But I think we need to be careful.

While we may be open­ing our­selves up for the world to see, we may be open­ing our­selves up a world of trou­ble, too.

Trans­parency may seem like the lat­est fash­ion. But it can also become dan­ger­ous on many lev­els. Some dan­gers are obvi­ous, like being robbed after pub­li­ciz­ing you were out. Oth­ers, not as much, like being rep­ri­manded for say­ing some­thing you shouldn’t have said, or even being fired for insult­ing your customers.

My con­tention is, too much trans­parency can hurt you in many ways.

I agree that social media is great for devel­op­ing and nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships. That’s what the word “social” in social media means. Or what it should mean, anyway.

But as with all rela­tion­ships, even when con­tin­u­ous, open com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an impor­tant com­po­nent, there should be a lit­tle mys­tique to keep the flame alive. A lit­tle room to allow for explo­ration and dis­cov­ery over a period of time instead of all at once.

In today’s open, Web 2.0 world, pri­vacy is more cru­cial than ever before. Why? Because trans­par­ent or not, every­thing you say online is per­ma­nent, can be found, and can be eas­ily mis­in­ter­preted. Espe­cially when taken out of context.

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We have all been judged at one point. But if you have ever judged oth­ers, par­tic­u­larly if you feel your judg­ments — no mat­ter how small — were incon­se­quen­tial or mean­ing­less, you have to watch this video.

My wife shared this video with me yes­ter­day, and I had a hard time try­ing to stop myself from tear­ing up. Watch it. Notice how even the tough­est and biggest bul­lies react. It’s quite amazing.

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