Comments on: Taming the Trolls: Dealing with Negative Blog Comments

By: jammer(six)

jammer(six) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:04:29 +0000

Pick Baker, he’s hot. ;-)

By: The Muse

The Muse — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:22:22 +0000

Excellent.
I had a horrible, yes horrible comment. I could barely discern if they really had read the post. SIGH. I took it to heart (which I know now~to delete them and move on), but it was the very first personal onslaught and I admit it put me in a deep dark place. I almost stopped blogging.
Great post.

By: FFB

FFB — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:46:14 +0000

Thanks for the advice! I’ve found, in my limited experience, that when you approach a negative comment in a positive way and try to understand where the person is coming from then they usually back down a bit and even apologize for their words. Many time an article caught the commenter at a bad time or they didn’t see the whole context of the site.

Other times people just want a soapbox and want to be mean. What gets me are the comments that could be parts spam, mean, or just looking at an opinion differently. But I like your statement that a blog isn’t a democracy. I’ll have to remember that my site is mine and I can allow whatever discussion I feel fit for the site.

By: mapgirl

mapgirl — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:08:57 +0000

Excellent post. I respect your high-quality dialogue at GRS and really appreciate the audience and their comments. I struggle with publishing comments no matter how hurtful they are and deleting them wholesale. (especially after a scary quasi-stalker incident early on)

Keep up the good work!

By: Wing Wong

Wing Wong — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:36:17 +0000

Reading this post reminded me back to the days when I was a heavy ready and poster on Usenet. It seemed like it was as close to being telepathic and having absolutely no filtering capability… the term “mind vomit” comes to mind.

The sad thing is, the more popular and visited a site, the higher likelihood of spam(commercial and immaturity posts). I learned this the hard way when I published my first blog towards the beginning of 2001 and literally was greeted with hundreds of posts from spammers and anyone else who wanted to dump their verbal garbage. Back then, it was such a pain, I just closed the commenting doors.

Having said that, with good comment moderation tools for the various open publishing/blogging platforms, I’ve once again opened my sites up for comments and the spam still comes, but now, it isn’t just immediate displayed to the public. It takes a little while, but being able to have real comments on my sites is worth the effort.

And… yeah, it’s a benevolent dictatorship… but a dictatorship nonetheless. Especially given how the laws have slowly taken more and more of the blogger and site owner’s protections away.

Wing.

By: a.b.

a.b. — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:31:41 +0000

That e-mail you wrote about a benevolent democracy was priceless. Thank you for sharing some of your hard work behind the scenes at GRS. I think some people think that blogging isn’t as involved as it really is.

By: Mike Piper

Mike Piper — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:55:25 +0000

Thanks for posting this. I’ve been struggling with a similar scenario for a few months now. (In fact, my post from today is a perfect example.)

“A blog is not a democracy” is very much what I needed to hear.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:40:36 +0000

I think it’s worth being even more aggressive than you suggest with comments and deleting/removing anything that even hints at trollery. For example, I would never let a comment stand like the one you cite above (even though it is admittedly amusing!). It drags down the standard of discussion and it suggests to other potential trolls that the door is open for them too.

I think a zero-tolerance policy is the best way to go, and thus I’d nuke a comment like that in a heartbeat. As you say, this is not a democracy. Fortunately, I’ve been extremely blessed to avoid any serious trollery at all over the nearly three years that I’ve run my frugal food blog. Uh, knock on wood of course.

Dan
Casual Kitchen

By: Tyler Karaszewski

Tyler Karaszewski — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:53:08 +0000

I hope I’n not one of the people towards which this post is targeted. I know that sometimes my criticisms can get a bit on the ‘scathing’ side, often without me fully realizing how they might sound to the person on the other side of the screen. I also know that I’ve annoyed or angered some other commenters on the site in the past. At the same time, I’ve seen plenty of people agree with my and praise my comments, too. In general I’d rather be provocatively controversial than ignorably pleasant, but sometimes I do look back over my comments and find that they sound a little harsher than I had really intended.

By: Kristen@The Frugal Girl

Kristen@The Frugal Girl — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:52:10 +0000

Thanks for this post, J.D. For the most part my commenters have been really positive and kind, but then again there are the not-so-nice commenters that pop up every now and then.

I think my biggest problem is that I’m a recovering people-pleaser, and so I let it bother me too much when someone is unhappy with something I’ve written. Blogging is probably good therapy for me, though…hopefully it’ll help me grow a thicker skin.

By the way, I do think that a blogger’s style will have a lot to do with the way the readers respond. If you blog in a humble way instead of a know-it-all way (which I think you do), your readers won’t be as prone to being critical and defensive.