I think David Pogue sums up what's wrong with online etiquette pretty well.

I know I got sick and tired of ducking rocks from anonymous know-it-alls. That irritated me as much as spam. My blog is a hobby. It brings in a little bit of money, but I'm not sure that the money covers the increase in my electric bill. I run my blog because I enjoy writing and because I've found a shortage of some types of useful information, so I tried to remedy that shortage when and where I could.

So I started requiring registration. In the process I pretty much ruined the blog, because I ditched b2 in favor of the software I'm using now. Of course, a few months after I made that change, b2 evolved into the lovely and wonderful WordPress, which now everyone and his brother is using.

Then Southwestern Bell started blocking SMTP traffic, preventing my software from sending out registration notices. There's a workaround out there for that, but I still haven't convinced myself, two years after I became aware of the problem, that it's worth fixing. I'm sure I'm losing readership because people who want to be able to sign in and comment can't, but I find I rather enjoy not having to deal with idiots. The dozen or so people who are left are nice people who say intelligent things.

Don't get me wrong, I deal with some rude and poor-intentioned people at work. The rudest and most difficult, not coincidentally, are the people I've never seen but only spoken with over the phone and e-mail. But even they control what they say a little bit. There's always the danger that we'll run into each other someday, after all.

I remember about seven years ago when I wrote something that made the front page of Linux Today. It was a thrill. I even ended up exchanging e-mail with the president of Mandrake, and some suggestions I made for features found their way into later versions of that Linux distribution. Those were fun times.

What goes through my head when I realize that I'll never make the front page of Digg?

One word: Good.

I still love to write, and I may have even figured out how to make enough money writing to make it worth my while to write regularly again. To be honest, right now I don't have time to write regularly, but when it's worthwhile, I can always find ways to make time.

Blogging fits into that equation, so I guess sometime between now and then, I'll have to figure out some way to deal with the trolls.