Comment and Disclosure Policies

I work hard to make this a great blog and I'm glad you're here.

You are invited to comment, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Comments are open but I'll delete those that are off-topic, spammy, overly self-promotional, abusive, inappropriate, or uncivil in any way. You can say what you want on your own blog, but you can't use mine unless you're cool about it.

My comment form isn't a place for you to advertise. If you abuse it, there is a good chance that I will publicly make fun of you.

Feel free to debate or disagree with me, but please identify yourself as I do here. It's hard to have a good conversation with someone hiding behind an alias. Anonymity has an important role online, but it also empowers anyone who wants to disrupt and destroy a conversation without contributing. Disclosure forces people to be honest and take responsibility for their own words.

This blog follows Shel Israel's fantastic Living Room Policy:

"If you came into my home and were rude to another guest, I would ask you to stop. If you continued to be rude, I would ask you to leave. From this point forward, this is what I will do. If I feel you are being abusive, hogging the conversation or otherwise discouraging the open exchange of legitimate points of view. I will ask you to be more polite. If you ignore the request, I will ban you from further comments. I call this the Living Room rule and I will enforce it subjectively. ... If you have something to say, and you want to be credible, you will need to identify yourself, and I encourage you also to identify where you are coming from, so that others may assess how strongly they wish to value your opinions."

Disclosure

I have tons of biases, preferences, and personal opinions. Here are the big ones:

• I own a company called GasPedal. 
• Lots of people pay me for advice. I like that! You can see my client list here, which is reasonably current. I shamelessly and proudly say really nice things about them.
•  These organizations pay me to make speeches. I say nice things about them too.
• GasPedal also runs the Blog Council, and their members have paid us a membership fee. And we like them a lot too.
•  You can assume that at any given time I'm trying to get more clients, and that I'll say nice things about people that I want to impress.
• I used to be CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, but I do not work there anymore. I do not speak for them or their members in any way.
• People often send me free stuff, because I'm a word of mouth talker (hint hint). I disclose that where it’s relevant and reasonable. But how often do you need to hear that Dell gave us some awesome computers? If you send me free stuff I will say nice things about you and your stuff (if it's good stuff).

Privacy and Email

We have a strong policy and we will never share your email address. You can read the privacy policy here.

Copyright and Trademark

All content on this site is Copyright 2008 GasPedal and Andy Sernovitz, all rights reserved. GasPedal is a registered trademark.

Please link back to this site and give us full credit for anything that you quote.