The Web Authority

I watch a number of blogs and I found this post at the Blog Herald interesting reading and wanted to share it with you. I live in the Washington DC area and bad behavior on the road is typical here. We have some of the rudest drivers in the nation, as documented by the Washington Post. Not only will someone flip you off for following the law, but if you move into their lane when they are 10 car lengths behind you, they may get incensed as you are slowing their commute down, that you are sure to get honked at and maybe even flipped off. This post at the Blog Herald talks about similar rude behavior on the Web specifically on Twitter and on blogs.

Although I have never had a situation on any of my platforms with rude comments, bigotry, and flaming exchanges between participants, I know that bad behavior like this exists. I have seen it first hand on several webmaster professionals forums. It is unfortunate that the larger you get, the more readership you garner, and the more visible your platforms become, you do become targets for people who really should take a deep breath, step back, and review what they have written before they click publish. 

People who exhibit this type of bad behavior on forums and blogs are called Trolls and you really don’t want them commenting on your own media platforms. Yes, controversy can be good for traffic, but when controversy steps over the line to rude behavior, then it must be stopped.

The post that I mention in the first paragraph speaks on the topic that should you block comments from certain individuals due to their history on other blogs and forums that you are aware of or should you wait it out. So based on all of this, should you turn off commenting on your own blog? Should you enable comment moderation? My recommendation for the majority of blogs still is to let comments come and to not moderate them. If rude comments do be come a pattern, then turn on comment moderation, but only once you’ve had a documented problem. The free exchange on your blog or forum should not be hampered by possible bad behavior until you really need to address it.