Sire’s most recent blog post..To Blog Or Not To Blog, That Is The Question

I’ve read your comment policy, and I think that it’s a good one. You’re only striving for quality comments, and discouraging people from coming into your blog and trying to get a link to theirs in your comment section. Even though that’s a major reason why a lot of us bother to leave comments, it’s a courtesy to try to add value with your comment. That’s an easy way to spot the newbie bloggers and the ones who don’t care, by the kind of comments that they leave. I try to always leave good comments on other people’s blogs, because if I don’t, it looks bad for me and my site.

Like I said, I don’t have any issue with how you handle your business. I visit your blog from time to time, and I don’t waste my time with bloggers who I disapprove of, so that’s a compliment.

When say that a blog is not like a home, I make the analogy that if people treat their home like some treat their blog, then they would be very lousy hosts, because there are a lot of bloggers who are happy to moderate and to delete comments if the comments are even slightly disagreeable. I might have been a little too harsh when I wrote that though, because people have different levels of online lives. After all, you strike me as a person who has fun in real life too. lol.

Thanks for commenting and peacefully disagreeing!

I don’t moderate comments, apart from the first one. All comments are accepted, except ones picked up by the spam filter, but not all survive. If they do not live up to the ‘Comment Policy’ they get the flick and I make no apologies for that.

Sire’s most recent blog post..Get Your Twittley Action Into Gear And Watch Your Post Rock

Allowing heated discussion is usually a good thing. I’ve only deleted one of the non spam comments from my site since I launched it, and it was because the person was just trying to start an argument. I will also delete comments if they get too personal or way too vulgar, but that hasn’t come up yet.

It’s not easy to find a quality spam blocker. Mine does a decent job, and it does sometimes identify good comments as spam, but then, all I have to do is go ahead and approve it.

Thanks for commenting!

@ Giovanna

My spam blocker works the same way as yours. I do think that we, as bloggers, should double check what our spam blockers do so that we don’t miss a good comment, because it’s disrespectful to the commenter when they take the time to comment and we don’t post it. I’m glad you like the site design. I’m planning on upgrading some more in the near future! Thanks for commenting!

@ Roman

You do bring up a good point. But you raise more questions in the process. I don’t necessarily blame businesses for wanting to maintain an image. If I was a restaurant owner, I wouldn’t want people holding rallies in my parking lot. However, when you’re maintaining an image, at what point are you doing your customers a favor by giving them a nice environment, and at what point are you censoring them unjustly?

I happened upon an online business a few months back that used a public forum as their customer service. Meaning that their complaints were right there for the world to see and people weren’t censored for complaining about their service. Not only did this give the business full transparency, but it made the business look really good because the public could see how they handled customers’ problems.

Also, I think that a lot of people that do business online know that you can’t hold the website responsible for what are in the comments. It’s the same reason that I’m against censorship in newspaper site comments. People know that the comments don’t represent the views of the site.

And anyway, when I wrote this article, I was thinking more along the lines of the personal blogs and the think tank blogs than the business blogs. I probably should have made that more clear.

I would love to hear what other people think of Roman’s statement. Thanks for commenting!

If your sells happiness by being about flowers, sunshine and butterfly kisses then the last thing the blog owner wants is somebody ranting about how they are having a bad day because it is raining. The Blog owner wants his visitors to feel happy when they visit the site because that is the image that is being sold.

Looking at a blog as a business makes it necessary to monitor the comments. For example, if you had a flowers shop you would do anything possible to stop the person in front of your store ranting to every passerby that people who buy flowers are rose murders. Free speech is great – but not if you have a image to maintain.

Roman’s most recent blog post..What Are The Odds That Your Blog (Or Website) Will Fail?

My site have a spam filter set up that it will hold the comment, if it looks like it might be spam. That gives me a chances to approve it.
By the way, I like how your site look.
Giovanna Garcia
Imperfect Action is better than No Action

Giovanna Garcia’s most recent blog post..Are you suffering from the Chronic “Yes, but” Syndrome?

Now, the problem I just realized is one of the plugins called spamfree may have affected some quality comments from being posted. It looks like it blocked spam comments but also gave a message when a real person posted a real comment.

So I turned that off and now I am face with like 10 plus spam messages to delete each day.

Perhaps I may need to find another spam filter so that it catches the bad stuff.

tomasz’s most recent blog post..Is your Religion making you poor?