Passing Comment

I’m lucky to get a few weblog comments every now and then, but probably remove more than I let through. Many are clearly spam, so they’re instantly deleted and the commenter banned. Some of those left are abusive or completely irrelevant and also get the chop, plus the occasional ban for persistent abuse.

That leaves the lovely legitimate comments, plus a few tricky borderline cases. Someone makes a simple, bland statement that happens to refer to their web site, or puts a call-to-action in as their name. Ham or spam? I tend to be fairly harsh, so if something feels a bit spammy it goes, but I realise I’ll occasionally get it wrong.

So please don’t feel offended if I’ve removed an innocent comment of yours, and don’t be afraid to mention your own work if it’s relevant and of interest to other readers. Imagine you’ve turned up at the pub: you’re welcome to pull up a chair and join a conversation if you have something to say, but start wandering around shouting about how great your business is and everyone’ll think you’re a tosser. Turn up wearing a sandwich board advertising gambling sites or dodgy pills and the landlord’ll kick you out right away.

Mon 14th Nov 2005, 9:30pm GMT

Filed under: Announcements, Marketing and Advertising, Web, Weblogs

Comments

"start wandering around shouting about how great your business is and everyone’ll think you’re a tosser"
From what you say, actually sounds like the landlord will kick them out. Why not just leave everyone to think they're a tosser? Human interaction already has these natural defences; moderation and bans are artificial and in my experience just generate unnecessary malice.

— Joseph, 18th Nov, 5:43am

By the way, grabbing the favicon from a commentator's URL is a cool little feature.

— Joseph, 18th Nov, 5:45am

I'm not a fan of over-moderation, but anything spammy has to go - if you don't delete & ban then you become even more of a target and deter proper comments.
Daftness and irrelevance is usually fine (otherwise I'd have to consider banning myself), but it can get 'noisy' and out of control (latest example of someone switching off comments to avoid bitching: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2… ).

— Matt Round, 18th Nov, 12:47pm

Where do we discuss furniture design?

— jesper, 20th Nov, 11:32pm

You're just taking the piss now...

— Matt Round, 21st Nov, 1:43pm

Comments are now closed for this entry.

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