Popular bloggers delete comments?
Richard Brownell says that popular blogger John Dvorak is deleting comments (and theorizes it’s cause the comments that John simply didn’t like them). Hey, he’s not the only one doing that. I’ve seen lots of bloggers delete comments.
I don’t.
At least not manually. My spam filter occassionally catches a few that I don’t get to. Sorry about that. Nothing personal, you understand.
One thing, since I use CoComment I notice that when someone deletes my comments they stick around in the CoComment service. It would be interesting to start “outting” people who delete comments and show which ones they deleted.
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February 13th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I delete comments all the time… people catch me in bad mood, it happens.
February 13th, 2006 at 11:49 am
I’ve been known to delete a comment or two. But mostly I deal with the spam and leave the resy alone. :-)
February 13th, 2006 at 11:49 am
MSDN blogs don’t only delete comments, most of them either are not allowed at all, or anonymous comments are not allowed (in recent changes). In most MSDN blogs, comments are moderated, which means in some cases they never appear.
I have been toying with positive versus negative comments lately. Nice findings…
February 13th, 2006 at 11:50 am
darn typos!!
February 13th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Not me I add them…it tends to make me more popular.
February 13th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Just to clarify, Dvorak or his fellow bloggers didn’t “delete” the comments so much as not allow them to be posted. They go into a queue for moderators to approve before being posted.
I’ve actually deleted a comment before on my blog, but it’s sole purpose was to say not so nice things about my mother IIRC.
February 13th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
I don’t delete comments (besides Spam), however I don’t approve 100% of them either. A lot of what doesn’t get approved are questions which I answer, I just don’t always approve the comment/response.
Generally, what is the point of comments if you don’t want people to comment? Seems like a lot of work as opposed to disabling comments.
February 13th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I delete spam, but don’t think I’ve ever felt inclined to delete a genuine post.
The last comment I made that was deleted was made in response to a A-lister’s post relating to censorship. My post simply disagreed with some of the premises of the argument. That level of hypocrisy is so far gone it’s hilarious ;-)
February 13th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Sounds like John Battelle is not open to comments like
“spams and monologs (or too select comments) and spams go all together” :cool:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002339.php#comments
February 13th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
What’s wrong with deleting comments? I understand your “my self-confidence is like a shield of steel” position, but it’s your blog, why shouldn’t you have editorial control over what’s on it? If people want to slag you off, they are free to do so on their own blogs.
February 13th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
comments can still be cached for one… one does not always ‘delete’ the networth of the comments..
two, Like Robert sez.. we an always track comments for scoblizer at cocomments here
Steph turn me onto this foo.. which another way of tracking conversations… in and round blogspher
February 13th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
me bad.. correct link for scoblizers on cocomments
http://www.cocomment.com/comments/scobleizer
February 13th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I think it’s mighty big of Robert Scoble not to delete comments and is a large contribution towards his well-deserved popularity in the community. A fair commenting system is what makes blogs so valuable vs. regular “corporate” websites.
I suspect a major reason high-profile figures like Bill Gates don’t blog is because they know they couldn’t keep up appearances; every post they made would be scrutinized and ripped apart. Could you imagine Bill’s blog retaining comments after being slash-dotted?
Comments are a sort of “policing” of blogs - the dialogue is the most important thing.
February 13th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
I don’t delete comments, except for the outrageous spam, but I do find it irritating when the comments wander so far off topic that they are irrelevant. I find it funny that the off topic comments can create such interest and take on a life of their own.
February 13th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Re: #13,
Robert,
Just as an experiment, couldn’t you try to con[vince] Mr. Gates (or Mr. Ballmer) to write a guest post on your blog here and we could *see* what happens as far as comments? Would it not be extremely enlightening?
Will you accept this modest challenge?
– Jack Krupansky
February 13th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
I delete irrelevant and/or anonymous comments from time to time, depending on my mood. If a nasty post shows up from nowhere, I just send it back there….
February 13th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Using coComment to “out” people who delete comments is a clever idea! If you have other ideas or suggestions how coComment could help you, let us know!
- Roger coComment Team
February 13th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I delete comments, but only if they’re obvious troll material. Things like “0mg ur site is teh suck ok thx” immediately hit the trashcan, but I’ll leave comments that just disagree intact.
February 13th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Kim cameron doesn’t publish any comments to his blog.
This guy is pushing the “The web has an identity crisis” and keeps the shouting down by avoiding any feedback whatsoever.
So, here’s somethings to check out that Kim won’t publish:
The Internet works pretty great without identity management. Look how many people are using it to create services, wealth and jobs.
Identity theft which seems to always be the justification for ID management do not go together. Just like the TV ads that claim broadband internet is “more secure” than dialup, it’s nonsense.
My feeling is the “crisis” is manufactured to meet many goals:
1. Privatize the web. Kim’s employer needs to know exactly who you are to limit your consumption for the service you paid. e.g. your computer as a pay-per-view-box. Where’s the incentive for an individual to innovate?
2. Securitize the web. Establish control over content production on the web. This is the back-end to the pay-per-view model. Of course someone wants to further monetize that and make people pay for what was once almost free. Again, bye-bye innovation.
3. Better track individual activity. I don’t really care about this because I’m not doing anything illegal. But some people get nervous.
4. Shift the economic liability of identity to the individual, away from the companies storing your personal information.
Welcome info-card!
February 13th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
I always suspect people who are afraid to sit near to ugly persons … as if one would not make any difference … same as for censorship supposedly to fight against “irrelevancies” … should not be so sure about one’s own pertinence …
February 13th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
I couldn’t count how many comments I delete per day. If I guessed, then it would be about 100. And I do it for all sorts of stupid reasons. For instance, I deleted all comments with the term ‘Blogspot’ because 99% of them were SPAM anyway. Sorry to the 1%, but it’s the only way I can manage 100s of comments per day. I also delete comments with foul and spam terms ‘rape’, ‘f—’, ‘texas-holdem’, etc. It’s my blog.
February 13th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
concretejesus: bloggers can’t block all comments. For instance, you can see all the bloggers who’ve commented about Kim Cameron’s blog here: http://www.bloglines.com/citations?url=http%3A%2F%2Fidentityblog.com%2F&submit=Search
February 13th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
“outing” people who delete comments?? wow! that’s harsh! Never thought of you as a storm-trooper kinda guy, Scoble.
Besides, sometime ya gotta delete. How many “comments” for male enhancement products and on-line poker should we really allow on our blogs? I kind of like Jim Turner’s idea–add them to look more popular! now if we could only come up with a scheme to add links and game the Technorati 100 ;-)
February 13th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
I have had to delete a few other than spams. I have a post concerning the world’s largest bear. I had to delete a few that were calling commenters dumb and saying how dumb I was posting it. Then a week or two ago I had to delete about 10 comments from an user because they used a post as a personal testing and a spot to inflate his coComment number. After posting 7 comments on one post in under 5minutes, WP started marking them as spam. Then he cussed my blog out for not posting his comments. He is still bitter.
February 13th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Tish: I’m hearing more and more about people who delete comments that don’t agree with their position. I think that kind of comment grazing sucks. If you can’t put up with people who don’t agree with you then go with the Russell Beattie approach and turn off comments altogether. Deleting SPAM and over the top offensive or racist ones is cool with me. But, just deleting them cause you don’t agree with them? Seems naughty to me. But maybe it’s just me.
February 13th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
[...] Scoble suggests one good thing that could come out of coComment’s semanic comment forking: “…since I use CoComment I notice that when someone deletes my comments they stick around in the CoComment service. It would be interesting to start “outting” people who delete comments and show which ones they deleted.” [...]
February 13th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I just delete silly postings like “nelson” or “haha”, and comments with spellflames, I hate spellflames :-)
February 13th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Let’s not get overexcited here, John is known for allowing discussions to happen in his blog.
http://NoBlogger.org
jveisdal.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Yeah I delete comments because they do not follow the comment criteria which is clearly stated here: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/misc/commentguidelines.html (please steal and use this list yourselves!) — it’s called a “moderated blog.” Geez, not unusual by any means. It just takes more work.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Well, it wasn’t deleting as so much as spam moderating. But never let the facts get in the way of an idle charge against JCD, I doubt you’d do the same for aanother fellow blogger. If you have watched his blog, which pretty obvious you haven’t, he’s had a pretty lively discussional mode, many people yagging him, many people supporting him. But then he can get the abusive posters that cross a line into the ‘nutty stalker mode’. Your bias is so obvious. I had one comment that I thought he killed, but in fact it showed up the next day, sometimes you have to give it time and not jump to conculsions and yell censorship. Besides if you go down THAT road, I can name nearly 50 bloggers that practice censorship and do it overtly and make no BONES about it.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
“outing” people that delete comments is just a stupid idea at best. Its their blog, they can do whatever they like. If they chose to not delete comments, and have frank open discussions then I appluade them, but we should not lower ourselves to McCarthian practices by “outing” those that don’t keep their blogs the way you think they should.
February 13th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Mike: true enough. But why shouldn’t I be able to make fun of them on my blog? Isn’t that limiting my ability to have some fun here on my blog?
Christopher: oh, and you don’t think I get nutty stalker mode comments? Hmmm. What makes John so special? ;-)
February 13th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Godwin deletes all the time.
But deleting is well within their rights. It’s there property. Personally? I’ve left comments in when they point out how wrong I am (surprised it doesn’t happen more often) or even point out silly spelling errors (I do most of my blogging at 5am). I’m human, you can disagree - it’s fine. Heck, with the world the way it is today (Dems vs. Rep., Muslims vs. everyone) I feel like I should lead the way with a little opinion tolerance.
February 13th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
I’m aware of Dvorak’s posting guidelines and I don’t believe I broke them. Pointing out the truth is not on that list. It wasn’t spam like Chris Coulter said. And I certainly wasn’t making a personal attack against an editor as I’d have to have a personal vendetta against somebody to do that. Considering I find Dvorak to be one of the more entertaining twit hosts, I don’t know why I would be making an attack. I don’t tend to hang around people’s blogs just to find things to attack them for.
But seriously, if you’re going to publish outright lies– and with added photoshopped lies at that– on your blog, you really need to be prepared to take a little heat on it. Moderate out the truth if you want. Maybe I seem like the troublemaker for bothering to blog this issue, but at least I don’t seem the fool.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Well, I wasn’t so much in specific regards to this issue itself, but this isn’t the first time Scoble wrongly needles on JCD re: Spamtrap Gate. But, JCD ever so often posts loony crazy web-creature conspiracy theories on his blog, which is totally out of kilter to his more skeptical column. So heat where heat needs be. But John has a pretty good blog, gets more of the news and weird bits than most blogs. But yeah, the Britney-bit, ummm….
Outting is a bad bad idea, imposing your blog moral judgement on others. So I dearly hope Scoble bites.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Christopher: I doubt I’ll be doing the outting. I’m too busy.
February 14th, 2006 at 4:09 am
Well, I don’t delete comments that I don’t like. But I delete comments that aren’t related to blog post they are commenting.
February 14th, 2006 at 5:36 am
Christopher: That’s why I wasn’t outting the comment moderation itself. I’ve got a fairly popular video game website and we need to moderate our comments. I’ve taken heat for that, even been called Hitler before. So I don’t have a problem with your typical “keep it clean and relevant” moderation policies.
February 14th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
who wishes to implement the “RSS Republic”?
Don’t miss the “RSS Republic”, the tool that will fix the blogosphere censorship issue :cool:
February 15th, 2006 at 6:48 am
why is it bad? surely its like a newspaper editor selecting letters to publish?
February 15th, 2006 at 6:49 am
worse than that, he only has a partial feed so fuck him anyway
:D
February 16th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
I’m begging for comment spam on my blog……….
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:05 am
Dave Winer deletes comments. He is a pig.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:50 am
I delete comments all the time as well. I don’t have to do it often, just the idea of comment moderation stops most weasels. But the nature of my blog attracts a few nuts and I refuse to give them a forum. Let them write their own blog. That’s what I did.
Meg Kelso