△ MENU/TOP △

Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
SearchClose Icon

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, suggesting it’s up to the blogger to check comments frequently and weed out the spam. By allowing comments to appear instantly, commenters are happy while rapid reactive review of comments will keep the blog free of the unsavory stuff.

Among the reasons to moderate, I included the potential for a comment that libels someone else. Today, while checking the moderation queue on one of my blogs, I found this:

Name redacted is a thief and imposter take no note of him. He is a fly by night character that moves on as he owes money.

I don’t know the person being accused in this comment. He’s not mentioned in the post to which the comment was left. I’ve never heard of the person who left the comment.

I suppose it’s possible that the individual in question did blow off a debt and the person to whom he owed money is so upset that he’s leaving these comments on blogs everywhere. It’s also possible that the accusation is completely untrue and that this is a case of character assassination with a hidden motive.

Either way, if the comment were discovered on my blog, I could have been sued by the individual mentioned for libel. I might have been able to make the safe-harbor argument, but only after spending a considerable amount of money on attorneys and the like. In the U.S., anybody can sue anybody for anything. Deleting the post—even if I discovered it after it had been up only 10 or 15 minutes—would not save me from a lawsuit if it had been discovered in that time (or if it had been cached by Google, making it discoverable long after I’d removed it).

I’m genuinely sorry if comment moderation annoys any of my readers. I’ll keep doing it.

10/24/10 | 6 Comments | Libel threat a good reason to moderate comments

Comments

  • 1.Who was that said "If you want to comment about my blog, start your own blog."?

    Allan Jenkins | October 2010 | Hjelm Bay, Denmark

  • 2.That was Dave Winer, whom some credit with being the first blogger (at least, the first to use blogging software).

    Shel Holtz | October 2010

  • 3.Shel, Good post! The other reason I moderate blogs is simply the sheer volume of blog comment spam - even with tools/services like Akismet and other such services.

    My personal preference is for the middle ground of "all comments are moderated until an administrator has approved one of your comments". With this, once I approve legitimate comments, the commenters can have future comments go through without moderation. Unfortunately, that's not supported on all blogging platforms.

    Dan York | October 2010

  • 4.Good reminder, Shel.

    I moderate comments for all the reasons mentioned here, and several others.

    I'm starting to see otherwise smart business people including long "email signatures" at the end of their comments that are nothing more than free commercials for what they sell. Last week, I found one that was longer than the comment she left. I deleted the commercial but left the comment intact.

    Also, some people have an "anything goes" philosophy when leaving comments. That includes dropping F bombs and other obscenities. I don't want those showing up in my business blog.

    Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound | October 2010 | Port Washington, WI

  • 5.I moderate comments on my blog for these reasons and because my policy is "if i wouldn't tolerate it in my living room, I won't tolerate it on my blog."

    it's astounding how much garbage spam filters miss, so it's become necessary to moderate comments no matter how you feel about it.

    B.L. Ochman | October 2010 | NYC

  • 6.I only moderate the first two comments; after that, a cookie is added to the person's browser (based on the email address and name field, I think) and beginning with the third comment, it's moderation-free. Works well.

    Ari Herzog | October 2010 | Newburyport, Mass.

Comment Form

« Back