The Comment Police

I appreciate the time anyone takes to read what I write here and I love your comments regardless of whether you do or don’t like what I’ve written. Bloggers are the nicest group of people I know. Only once in the 4 years I’ve had this blog have I found it necessary to delete a comment. I wonder why so many other bloggers have ‘comment approval’ enabled. Are you afraid of dissenting opinions? If you’re a woman, do you get a lot of inappropriate comments from men? Do you have control issues? Do you fear what other bloggers will think if they read a negative comment? Will they leave you if someone else disagrees with your post? Are you obsessive-compulsive and feel the need to proof-read and spell check everything first? I honestly don’t care if you have to check over my comments before they appear on your blog, but seriously, what’s the big deal? I don’t mean to sound critical if you’re a comment approver, I’m curious. If you’ve got a good reason I’m sure I’d agree. Could someone explain why you do it?

13 responses to “The Comment Police

  1. Absolutely. I hated to have to do it, but I did it when a troll kept posting nastier comments faster than I could delete them. I just got sick of it.

  2. I just don't like the word mucus.. Oh, and now I have said it. Damn you, Phil.

    Honestly, I don't think people, could say meaner things than my Mom.

  3. I moderate because sometimes I get spam comments which are really annoying. Also, sometimes people give me their emails in comments because they could not figure out how to contact me directly and they probably don't want their email address sitting on my blog for the long term.

  4. It is a control issue…it's my blog and I can do with it what I want! But to give you a better explanation than that, like Riot Kitty, I had a blog that had one too many trolls and while it would have been satisfactory to have their comments appear so that others could see them for the losers that they really were, I felt violated and the harassment was completely intolerable so I enabled comment moderation. I also had a situation where some skank hacked my computer, stole my blogging passwords, took over that particular blog and photo shopped a photo of me naked. There was no way I could take it down and Blogger was no help so it's still out there in cyber world.

    And while we're at it, why do you have word verification enabled?! That's probably a worse option than comment moderation! I don't have it and I never get any spammers and when I do, clicking 'delete' isn't that difficult, lol.

  5. I don't have Word Verification or Comment Mod. I don't get enough comments to need it. Ha! No haters either. Usually the hater would leave eventually and one could remove the moderation after a bit.

    Sure, a couple times some weird spammy comment ended up on my blog, but I simply deleted it. Also, moderation is one thing extra I'm too lazy to bother with. 😉

    So, do I get your $5 for not having that stuff on my blog??

  6. Touche' to those of you who called me on my word verification. I didn't used to have it and got a tom of spam comments.

  7. I hate word verif way more than moderation. I kept it on for a week after I started, got rid of the spammers and then turned it off. I haven't had a spammer since.

    And, truth be told, more often than not, if I go to comment on a blog, and I hit that verification, I won't comment most of the time. You'd hear from me more often if word verif wasn't enabled. Not that you're dying to hear from me.

  8. Ok, the votes have it. I will turn off word verification, but if I get spam I'm putting it back on.

  9. I've never turned on comment… approval capabilities. Mostly because I just don't give a crap. I mean, if someone wants to leave a nasty comment.. they can. I probably won't delete it either. The only comments I would delete would be something that in some way gave personal info about me that wasn't meant to be on my blog… like my address or something.

  10. Phil is fishing for comments, me thinks. I have no opinion on this subject other than… to each his/her own.

  11. I'm with Dawn. If it's not horribly offensive or too revealing, why not leave those comments on there? I've gotten some nasty ones that I've left up.

  12. Dear Sherry, No I am not fishing for comments, and even if I was, why thge hell not? Who doesn't enjoy the interaction with other bloggers. Isn't that why we do this? To be heard and validated? If a blogger blogs in the internet and no one is there to comment, have we really made a sound?

  13. Once I posted a blog in which I happened to mention that my baby boy was getting circumcised. Out of the blue I started getting hateful emails from people all over the world (I have trackers on my blogs) telling me how sick and twisted I was for letting my baby be “mutilated.” Jeez, it was like some dude Googled the word “circumcise,” found my blog, and unleashed the wrath of the Foreskin Liberation Front on me or something. It was awful being harassed and persecuted for something so COMMON. And then they started attacking me because I wouldn't approve their comments. I can't tell you how glad I was to have comment moderation on there before all that happened.

    That, and I'm paranoid. 😉

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