Friday, September 25, 2009
Blog comments now being moderated
Recent anonymous drive-by comments on some posts such as "lame" and "who cares?" apparently by one immature individual, have forced me to start moderating comments. This will only result in a minor inconvenience that will allow me to continue to accept anonymous comments from responsible individuals who might offer criticism of a more constructive nature. That the Blog had managed to operate for more than a year without moderation had given me hope that I would never have to resort to it.
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7 comments:
This is a shame. You post interesting informative insights on our community, it would be nice if it had been received in that spirit. Not always the case.
Dissent is welcome. But I am not going to let rude individuals with nothing to say turn the Blog into a circus.
The funny thing is Virgil that err, they spent time coming here, spent time reading your blog and then spent time writing a comment lol!
So they actually have added and helped increase your visitor stats and ranking.
As for the moderation, a great and easy tool for weaning out commentators who hide behind anonymity.
I wish the operators of another local message board would get a clue about this.
HOW RUDE, SOME PEOPLE JUST DON'T GET RESPONSIBLE, RELEVANT JOURNALISM!
Virgil,
It's your blog and you can do whatever you want. But perhaps you should provide guidance about what is "acceptable" and what isn't. These are very subjective concepts. Some people say something negative is "rude". Others call it dissent. I wonder how you will draw a line between the two?
Sometimes there is a fine line between rudeness and dissent. Perhaps, "rude" is in the eye of the beholder. To me, acceptable dissent is disagreement with an explanation. This can be done politely and with respect for the opinions of others. Rudeness in this context, would be negative comments with nothing to back them up, e.g. posting the comment "lame" and nothing else. Not only is it rude, it's a personal attack.
In the early days of the Internet, some people would seek out various Internet forums and deliberately post rude, negative comments in order to start what were called "flame wars." This kind of attack was called flaming. For instance, they might go on a Kenny G fan forum and post "Kenny G sucks!" If they didn't get a rise out of the forum users, they (using a different ID) or their cohorts would post a rude defending response, enabling them to keep the war going. The goal was to make the experience so unpleasant for users that they would abandon the forum and, perhaps, seek another venue, where they would be sought out and attacked again. Wondering why anyone would do this is akin to wondering why hackers do what they do.
And that is why Blogger provides the option of moderating comments.
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