I ran into an interesting issue that I hadn’t run into previously, I met a blogger who ran a company blog about promoting SEO and Web Marketing. A blog mind you that offered tips, information and more regarding the bloggers foray and offerings for web marketing. I found a few articles interesting and the content good, but offered a few of my own experiences and point of views on some SEO topics. I did notice that my comments were deleted, I had assumed spam but found out that they were deliberated deleted because the admin didn’t want any comments that disagreed with him to be shown on his blog.
It was a business blog, promoting his business so I can understand that point of view a little bit, but ultimately do you think that YouTube and major websites really filter everyone’s comment if they “didn’t agree, or offered a different opinion on a subject?” You don’t win readers and traffic by censoring people who comment, I understand spam and crude comments, but difference of opinion comments are in my opinion open to free speech. By running a blog you are promoting free speech, but it is an interesting concept to remove that same free speech from your readers, and instead tailor your comments to only be what you want them to be. This is no more valuable than creating a whole bunch of fake accounts and writing “great article” comments on your own blog to yourself.
I was curious to hear from my fellow bloggers on how they handle commenters who say something that is in stark contrast or disagreement with what they are talking about. Personally I enjoy a good debate and differences of opinions, but I realize different blogs have different purposes and not everyone fits this bill.
So have you ever censored a comment on your personal or company related blog? What are your methods and guidelines for comment censoring?
I definitely want to hear from you on this one, as this is one area of blogging I am not that experienced in.
-Dragon Blogger
