Last week I asked whether you had ever commented on a blog under a fake name. While 32% said that they hadn’t the next two highest results were yes, so no one knows how I feel and yes because I was scared of getting flamed.

I can certainly understand why you would feel this way. I often find myself deciding not to hit the send button on a comment because it is difficult to judge how people will react online. They may take the comment as intended, or they may react with insults and aggression. Some people can detach themselves entirely but I have never been able to disregard other people’s comments. Insults are insults.

This week’s poll

What do you think of free themes? I hate to say it but I have always considered most free themes to be the work of beginners who are looking to publicise their blog. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I don’t see a great deal of merit in the majority of themes.

Despite this, there did used to be a set of developers who were doing great themes for free; most efforts seem now to be going into earning revenue from themes. I wonder if this is the inevitable consequence of the existence of the proprietary themes market, or if we are just waiting for the next new idea.

I am hopeful that people like Ptah Dunbar, Alister Cameron and Ian Stewart, who are all working on projects that aim that give themers a massive head start on their theme, can kick off a new round of ideas among the people that base themes on their work. The work they are doing is very good, but the desire for each themer to contribute to the community must be there and I don’t know if it is.

My poll for this week then is this: