To Follow or Unfollow?

I've been using twitter for about three years now, and as I said yesterday, I'm enjoying it. I use it primarily to keep tabs on my friends, on bands that I like, on a bit of news (though that hasn't proven very beneficial) and a sports team or two. You can see who I follow over at @donmilleris.

That said, there are a few people I've followed and then stop following. Everybody has different preferences…here are mine:

1. If people tweet more than two or three times a day, every day, I usually unfollow  them after a while. It's nothing personal. And if you're trying to gain twitter followers, I hear you should tweet more, not less, but there's rarely two or three things worth tweeting about a day in my book. Do I want to know what you ate for dinner? Actually, I do. I mean I want to know what my friends are up to, about twice a day!

2. I stop following people who try to be funny. It's so, so painful to read a bad joke.

3. I stop following people who use too many cheesy religious quotes. Sorry. I know that makes me a bad person, but I do.

4. I block people who are disrespectful. I don't do this out of principle, or even to be vindictive, I just block them because, well, I don't want to read insults.

5. I drop people who disrespect others. Got a blanket statement about how a politician is an idiot? I'll probably drop you, mostly because it's likely that he or she finished Westpoint first in their class and chances are they aren't an idiot, even if they don't see the world the way we may see the world.

6. I've plenty of friends who sign up for twitter and then don't use it. I respect that. But I do unfollow them, eventually, simply because it keeps things clean as I'm scrolling through the old tweet deck.

What are your guidelines for who you follow and don't follow?