Popular bloggers delete comments?

I delete comments all the time… people catch me in bad mood, it happens.

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…

I’ve been known to delete a comment or two. But mostly I deal with the spam and leave the resy alone.

darn typos!!

Not me I add them…it tends to make me more popular.

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.

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.

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

Sounds like John Battelle is not open to comments like

“spams and monologs (or too select comments) and spams go all together”

http://battellemedia.com/archives/002339.php#comments

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.

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

me bad.. correct link for scoblizers on cocomments

http://www.cocomment.com/comments/scobleizer

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.

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.

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

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….

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

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.

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!

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 …

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.

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

“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

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.

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.