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Delete or Edit Comments?

pearl 60

Boys Having Fun

photo by Rayphua

When I first started blogging, I remember not getting even a single comment and it hurt real bad. I kept writing and slowly people started reading and commenting and then some also started linking to my posts and the blog which brought more people to read and give feedback and I felt part of this wonderful community. I LOVE getting comments and hearing different takes on what I write and I LOVE discussions taking place here on the blog.

I have gotten to know so many people by their first names and remember their blogs that now when I see them on some social media site, I can immediately tell who this person is and remember to go to their blog and leave a comment on their post of the day or just say a hi via comment form etc.

But what do I do when some inanimate object like Sofa, Dining Tables, Swimming Pools, Stock Trading Software, Printed Circuit Boards or Ghillie Suits leave a comment and I have no way of knowing who this person is? Clicking on the links they leave gets you to their niche site or some made for adsense site.

Sometimes the comment is nothing but gibrish and I don’t have to think twice about deleting it. My dilemma comes when the comment itself is good but the commenter leaves their business name instead of their own name in the ‘name’ box. I wouldn’t want to delete the comment but I also do not like to talk to furniture or circuit boards.

What do you do? Do you edit the comment or delete it altogether?

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60 comments
Shana Albert - TheNanny612

Hi Pearl,

Let me just start off by saying that this is the first time I stopped by your blog and I love it!! You have a brand new dedicated reader. What the hell took me so long to stop by? I love your fresh perspective of things. :-)

Anyway, your post…. I think I would delete the comment. It is unfortunate that if the commenter had something that would have started a wonderful discussion, but by using something other than his/her name on the comment leaves you to wonder whether they are trying to get a back link for his/her keywords. If we allow a few through then our readers will think it is okay to do the same. But, by deleting the comments that are there for the back-links we are letting our readers know that those kind of comments are unappreciated.

Again, Pearl…. you have a wonderful blog and I will be back regularly to check your posts out.

Shana

Shana Albert – TheNanny612’s last blog post..26 Reasons Why I Love Twitter – Plus 27 More just in Case

pearl

@Sue – exactly – thats my stance, I’d feel a bit unfair to someone who otherwise adds a valuable feedback – thanks for stopping by

PS: I replied to your email the other day… hope you rec’d it

pearl

@Alina – same here… I’ll edit the comments instead… may be some of us are too soft :) glad to have you back Alina…. stay in touch

pearl

@Shana – heyy I am soo glad you finally found the blog and I never realized you didn’t know :) thank you so much for the kind words and I am thrilled to have you as my reader Shana ..

hmm whats it with me that I feel bad deleting people’s comments? I really feel they ought to have a bit of consideration for others ‘coz if everyone started doing this, it wouldn’t look like a conversation at all…

please… do come back and I’d be looking forward to your comments here…

Oh, my good friend ghillie suits is here today :)

pearl

Hi Ghillie Suits Guy – Im glad you came by! and let me first thank you for reading my blog… sincerely.

Now I understand that you choose to be private and I absolutely don’t have a problem with that… and its not really about me wanting you or anyone to give me your real true names when you want to remain anonymous.

May be if you had used any name – other than your business, no one would have noticed anyway..

and with the commentLuv plugin, and this blog being do-follow, you were getting the benefit anyway… don’t you agree? :) let me know…

Mihaela Lica

No deleting unless they are spam or offensive to the readers. And no editing the comment either. What I do though is remove the link if it leads to offensive or questionable content. :) I don’t want to have my readers to land on pages that contain porn, spyware or anything that might offend them and I do not want my site to be associated with such elements. I am a “dofollow” blogger like you, and many spammers abuse this (actually my blog is listed in the ultimate list of dofollow blogs on many forums and blogs). I noticed that the spammers make now valid comments so I always check the link if I get a “new reader.”

Mihaela Lica’s last blog post..Social Network Automation and Why You Don’t Want to Be Part of It

IAAdmin

Because my site is members only (although it’s free to join), all of my comments, at thus far, have been great. And yes, I love getting comments, too……………….:)

Matt B

I’m of the edit point of view. It does help to have a written policy (blog post or static page).

Stephen Cronin

Pearl,

It’s all about link juice, PageRank and ranking high in the search engines (SERPs).

Because you’re a DoFollow blog, I get a little bit of PR for the link I leave with my comment. That helps with my PageRank, but not necessarily with the SERPs.

If I leave my name in the name field, it really only helps me in the SERPs if people are searching for my name. If I leave my keywords instead, it helps me if people are searching for my keywords. That’s the reason people leave keywords instead of names – not because they are just advertising…

Personally I allow keywords in the name field, because I don’t mind people benefiting – IF they’ve read my post and made a decent comment.

Having said that, I’m starting to think about using the CommentLuv plugin as you do. That will help people get keyword rich links, so I may decide that the name must not have keywords. IF I do that, I’d edit my template and change the Name (required) prompt in the comment form to something like Name (no keywords allowed).

Stephen Cronin’s last blog post..WordPress Plugin IFrameWidgets 1.0 Released

pearl

@Mig – great strategy there :)

@IAAdmin – hmm members only site – whats the purpose of that though? Are members able to publish their content as well on your site?

@Matt B – I will be adding commenting policy soon… had been thinking about it for sometime but never got around to it!