I think we’ve found a suitable solution to the question and answer problem on Jackie Clay’s blog. We’re going to restrict questions to readers who are paid subscribers to the print issue. In a few days we’ll put a form on Jackie’s blog so people who want to ask her a question can fill it out with their name and address, which we’ll compare to our database of paid subscribers.

Simple solution, huh? That will weed out at least 80 percent of the questions, unless some of those nonsubscribers decide to subscribe. To date, we’ve had a total of one person out of the 80% of nonsubscribing questioners at Jackie’s blog take advantage of the free Jackie Clay CD-ROM offer and become a subscriber. Not exactly encouraging.

Many of the questions asked on Jackie’s blog over the last three months were redundant anyway and could have been found by a simple search of Jackie’s CD-ROM. After all, it has 11 years worth of her questions and answers from the pages of the print issue.

I’ve also decided to restrict Jackie to blogging twice a week, rather than three times. She has been spending many hours blogging and answering readers’ questions, actually exhausting herself in the process, and not enough time writing for the print issue, where the major portion of her paycheck comes from. Jackie writes for a living, and as much as she felt obligated to the magazine to answer all the questions thrown at her, she seemed relieved yesterday when I told her she would now only have to answer questions from our paid subscribers. To answer questions, she typically had to crank up the generator after she put her aging Mom to bed, then spend a couple of hours responding. Henceforth, we’ll automatically filter out questions from nonsubscribers before the questions get to her.

Jackie obviously doesn’t want to be the “heavy” in this. That’s my job — being a mean, stingy publisher who insists his writers’ intellectual output reap monetary reward. I also don’t want her exhausted. Writing is hard work, and I’ve got a few other writing projects for the print issue I’ve asked her to work on.

By the way, nonsubscribers who want to subscribe to the print issue, so they can ask Jackie questions at her blog, will have an opportunity to do so once we get the new form in place on her blog.

There is another, very important, issue at stake here. It’s exhaustion of a writer. David Lee is a good point. I mentioned a few blog posts ago that David Lee has decided to stop writing. He’ll not only stop writing his blog, but he’ll stop writing for the print issue, at least for a while. That’s a big loss for the print issue, and I lay the blame at my own feet.

Lee is a real talent. He not only writes but has tremendous knowledge in the building field. He’s exactly the type of talent I seek out for the print issue. I knew several issue ago that he was thinking of putting his writing on a back burner while he pursued his art and other things, and I pursued him with an offer of substantially higher payment for his articles if he would continue writing for the print issue. He agreed. Then I got this blogging idea and asked him to blog too. Unfortunately, BHM earns so little from the blogs that I was only able to offer him a small amount of money to blog.

But Lee wrote his heart out anyway, producing sophisticated mini-articles with each blog post. I remember telling my daughter several times: “Read this guy. He’s giving you a blueprint to get your own home.”

But then he quit. After three terrific months of blog posts, I believe he exhausted himself mentally. You can only keep up intellectual output at that level for so long. It is mentally exhausting because writing at the level of a David Lee is very hard to do. What I, as the manager of BHM’s best writers, did, in effect, was to prematurely burn out one of our best writers. He was on the fence anyways because he has talents in other areas he wanted to pursue. But I could have had him as a writer for the print issue for at least another couple of years had I not burned him out on the blog. Huge mistake on my part, and I’m going to make sure I don’t repeat it with Jackie Clay.

Moderating comments to control spam

By the way, it turns out our blog software moderates all comments in order to control spam. So if you comment on any of the BHM blogs, you will have to wait for me to okay the comment before it appears. I moderated comments for the blogs today and found one real comment, but 106 pieces of spam.