A commenter called John asked why I “censor” comments. I was taken aback. Obviously the implication is I pick and choose what appears on my blog. Of course I do, but not based on if the commenter agrees with me or not. I thought I would take a moment to explain how I go about approving or deleting comments under moderation here on this blog.
First I need to be clear. This is my blog. I set the rules. I reserve the right to display, edit or delete any comments as I see fit. It’s my name above this blog after all. Just as you wouldn’t encourage bad behavior in your home or workplace I do not allow it here. Until now the only comments I have deleted were spam or comments I wouldn’t want to expose to the public because they were nasty/hate/sick/foul-mouthed ..
I will delete spam and any comment if the intention was to attack, denigrate, diminish, harm or cause upset to an individual or group or the intention was to troll or hijack the conversation.
As you can see on some days I get a ton of comments and I show them. I try to answer as many as I can. Disagreeing with me is positively encouraged.
I use moderation along with Akismet to reduce my spam, it is a brilliant system and most days works very well. It seems some comments have been mistaken as spam for some reason. I’m not sure what algorithm they use and I am sure they would not tell me if I asked so I couldn’t say why but comments with links in are always marked as suspicious and I have to go through extra steps to publish them.
On one or two occasions I have edited a comment for formatting, for example if their pasted URL was so long it would stick out into the sidebar.
So to summarise:
- I encourage you to comment. Share your thoughts, I encourage you to disagree or see things differently – how else will my opinions develop?
- On-topic links are encouraged, comment “signatures” or random links just to promote your stuff will be removed. You have a link from your name, and they are free of no-follow, I think that is enough, right?
- The name field is for your name, not the headline of your latest post or for SEO-boosting anchor text. Nicknames are fine, though like most people I prefer real names, and anyone using a blatant keyword-grab (“Custom Kitchen SEO Paris Hilton San Diego Hotel”) will be edited to match their email name or marked as spam.
- Please be polite, courteous and stick to the topic. Not a lot to ask? I break the on-topic rule myself on occasion but politeness really can’t be stressed enough.
- If I delete your comment by mistake then submit it again and tell me. Otherwise I can not get to the bottom of why this happens.
I hope that clears things up. Of course if you think any of this could be tweaked to work better let me know in private or in the comments 🙂
