Table of contents for Blog comments
Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others. You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.
—Fauna, Sleeping Beauty
It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten negative comments, but last week I had a few. Some were allowed to stay. But they progressively got worse and violated the written comment policy here on MamaBlogga and some were deleted.
While we’ve discussed handling negative comments here before, I’ve seen a few good posts on this around the blogosphere lately. Last month, ProBlogger had a guest post about dealing with negative comments. The author reminds us:
A good rule of thumb is that nasty or negative comments are never about you or what you’ve written, they are always about the person who wrote them. (Even if people disagree with what you’ve said, most of them can do it in a sane & respectful fashion.)
(Hence the quotation from Sleeping Beauty above.)
She addresses both the drive-by troll (“Delete their comment & if what they’ve said is really nasty, just ban them. You don’t need the strife!”) and the long-time commenter turned nasty (to whom she sends a friendly email).
Just last week, Scribbit posted about this issue, too. She said:
Be careful how you treat readers, even the negative ones. Not just for fear of them never returning—rude ones probably never will anyway—but because it’s common courtesy and because they’re people too with thoughts and opinions that won’t always mesh with yours and darn it, that’s what makes the world so exciting. Who knows? Maybe they’re even right once in a while.
She also included a very fun flowchart for guidance on whether to delete nasty comments.
On my work blog, I delete almost nothing but spam and blatant self-promotion—and I get a lot more nasty (and dumb) comments over there. I’m slowly learning to walk away from people who simply aren’t listening to me while trying to engage in a “debate” (though this would normally be called a “monologue”).
But here on MamaBlogga, a personal, mom blog, I can delete with impunity, and I have deleted more than just spam comments. I still feel a little weird about it sometimes, though. Do you have any qualms about deleting rude, mean or simply borderline comments?
5 replies on “Handling negative comments part II”
Only a genius like you could tie in Sleeping Beauty and Darren–brilliant!
Unless the comment is outright mean and doesn’t contribute to the topic, I don’t delete. I’ve had my fair share. At first read I get hurt, then I think about what illicited the negative comment, then I move on.
In a way though it is very humbling and keeps me grounded and honest about what I write in my blog.
I would delete them. Other than the misunderstanding I experienced I have not had anyone leave a nasty comment. I’m sure that day is coming and it’s nice to see how the problem has been dealt with in the past.
I agree, I am a Mother and my blog is my personal commentary and therefore I feel I have the right to delete nastiness.
Just my 2 cents. 🙂
I am rather new to the blogging world. Technically, I guess I am a “mom” blogger because I stay home with my kids. But I don’t blog about them much except in the vaguest terms. Like when something funny happens that I think everyone can relate to in a two or three word snippet. But mostly I blog about politics, law, church, faith, etc. That kind of thing. The impetus really was I kept getting in these discussions with people whose opinions rankled me on THEIR blogs. Yes, I admit, I was banned on a couple of them. I admit that I just can get a bit snarky when I think someone’s opinion is out there. Maybe I need to work on that….
Anyhoo..things really escalated because these couple of people thought a good way to deal with comments that had a touch of sarcasm in them was to out my name and location on their blog. I was a bit put out (my fighting back consisted of finally asking myself what I was so scared of and just go for it and start my own blog and break the anonymity…I had been petrified of anyone online knowing my real name). My feeling was yeah, they asked for it by posting on highly inflammatory political/religious topics. You post your support for illegal immigration, gee, don’t be surprised if some of the comments take on a bit of a nasty tone. I have gotten hate calls after letters to the editor. My take is if you don’t want the feedback, keep your opinions to yourself. Mind you, mostly we are talking about the usually “how typical for a liberal”, “how typical for a conservative” type of sarcasm. No threats of bodily hard or stalking or anything. Just some sarcasm. Which isn’t the nicest thing in the world. Of course these bloggers felt very free to be sarcastic in their posts about views they disagree with but heaven forbid the favor gets returned. Politics can get ugly.
So I am VERY glad to see that my feelings this was mishandled were validated. I have a policy on my blog of deleting nothing but spam or anything that could get me sued. NOt that I have much traffic yet….
My feeling is if I am going to post about current events, I am impeding a free press if I delete anything that doesn’t just keep on reinforcing my own beliefs. Even if I KNOW they are wrong, part of the critical thinking process is that people get to see all sides and figure it out for themselves.
Well, yes and no. Bloggers, frankly, aren’t journalists. Your blog is your opinion, and you don’t have to allow anything you don’t want on your blog, even in the comments.
Let’s give people a little credit: if they want to know all sides of an issue, they’ll find them. It’s not like people can only read one blog and that one blog has to inform them of everything on that topic.