Blogging Tip: Avoid Disaster, Moderate Your Blog’s Comments

I’ve been blogging for a decade, and have many blogs. Blogging is my favorite method of communication, and every time I get a new idea, I consider creating a blog for it. I’m a blogging evangelist.

But…

If you’re going to blog, you need to use common sense.

For goodness sake, MODERATE your comments. If you don’t, it could lead to hassles you can do without.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen several naive bloggers end up in the mire because they believed that they should allow their readers to say whatever they want to say.

That’s all very well, but YOU are responsible for what’s published on your blog, whether you like it or not, and whether you realize it or not.

Shel Holtz says in this post “Libel threat a good reason to moderate comments”:

Last week I reacted to the notion that moderating blog comments is a fast path to annoying your readers. Comments to the post leaned toward moderation, but several—including some from people I respect deeply—opposed moderation on personal blogs…

Read the rest of the post, it’s illuminating.

What struck me most was Shel’s point “moderating blog comments is a fast path to annoying your readers”.

Geez, really? Moderating is a “fast path to ANNOYING readers”?

If you’ve been online for more than two minutes, you know that the Web is a haven for loonies and extremely nasty people. The mission of these unfortunate souls is to troll blogs and forums and leave demented comments which are written solely to annoy readers…

I guarantee you, if you don’t moderate your comments, sooner or later a comment will be left which does much more than annoy your readers: it will land you in legal difficulties. Or worse.

You don’t need the hassle.

Remember, you’re responsible for what’s published on your blog. Accept the responsibility, and moderate all comments.

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