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There have been so many articles around the web on proper comment etiquette. Just this morning, Chris Brogan delivered "A Crash Course In Comments". And many of us have also read "A Lesson in Comment Etiquette" by Linkers Blog. But it seems that many people who leave comments around the web just aren’t reading these articles. And as a result, they regularly commit many comment no-no’s that might make us consider editing their comments.

‘Editable’ Offenses

#1. The Shameless Link

One way to ruin an otherwise great comment is to add an additional link within the body of the comment that is off-topic or obviously added for promotion. Linkers Blog says:

There’s no reason to leave another link in the body of our comment. That behavior easily renders an otherwise well meaning comment into something embarrassingly transparent. No one wants to play with a spammer.

So, what do you do when you encounter something like this? Do you leave it, delete it, or edit it?

#2. Keyword Marketer

Perhaps you’ve received a great comment but it is not in accordance with your comment policy because the tag name left by the visitor is full of promotional keywords. Do you edit the name?

#3. The Spammy Link

Last, but not least, sometimes you might discover that a comment which meets all other good comment guidelines fails in one key area. The link that is left to their website directs people to a spammy website, or a website which employs automatic redirects to other websites. Do you delete the link? Do you even visit links that visitors provide?

Other Reasons To Edit Comments

Even with good comments, sometimes visitors make mistakes which need to be edited. Some examples include:

a wrong website address has been entered in the url field and you go to a website that doesn’t exist
a code sample has been distorted by blog software and makes no sense
a spelling mistake makes a comment ambiguous and confuses readers

So what I want to know is: Do you edit your visitors’ comments? Or do you just delete the comments that you don’t want to feature? Or maybe you allow all comments, regardless of their content?

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Tags: blogs, comments

24 Responses to “Do You Edit Comments Visitors Leave On Your Blog?”

On January 21, 2009 at 10:25 am,Donny Gamble wrote:
Thanks for the link love Chris. This is a great resource post that I might link to in the future
On January 21, 2009 at 12:47 pm,Dominic Jones wrote:
One issue with editing any comment is that you are then endorsing or adopting the comment by doing so because you are posting a version you approve of.
On corporate blogs, this can raise legal issues, especially securities law issues. The SEC says companies are not responsible for comments posted by third-parties, but there’s a question about the applicability of that if a company edits a comment. There are other laws that apply as well.
On my blog, which is not a corporate blog, I simply delete comments that I don’t like for whatever reason. Under my ethics as a former journalist, I used to feel strongly that all comments should appear, as long as they weren’t obvious spam.
But I have changed my opinion over time and now take a very active role in moderating comments. I never edit them, but I delete anything that does not provide value to my readers.
My biggest problem is vendors who post misinformation, or who fake their identities and then attack their competitors. These people are stupid and don’t realize that I have their IP addresses when they post comments. I would love to out them, but I think there are privacy issues with doing that. Or am I wrong?
Thanks for your thoughtful blog posts. I was turned on to it by Steve Rubel and have enjoyed the past week or so of posts.
On January 21, 2009 at 12:56 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Dominic: Haha. I think that you created that mistake on purpose just to ask for the edit.
As for the editing of comments, I hadn’t thought of certain responsibilities which might be incurred… Yes, many companies are protected from the actions of their visitors. So they could be held liable for any content that they edit.
And fortunately, I haven’t had any problems with people ‘faking’ their identities. But I do hear that this is indeed a big problem in certain industries. I don’t know about any privacy issues with outing people, but I am by no means the expert. Perhaps I’ll do some research, as you have raised quite a few interesting questions.
Thanks for your insightful comment. I am glad that you found our blog.
On January 21, 2009 at 12:59 pm,Jason Dower wrote:
That’s a great question, Well I think from my own experience of my blog and reading the top marketers blogs, leaving your Url in your comment is the big NO-no as it is called PIMPING, I will read the comment quickly and unless the content is exceptional I will delete the whole comment, As I dont like pimping and even try not to pimp on twitter, If you write good content people will read and follow as they want to know more about what you have to say, I correct spelling mistakes as I have dislexcier also there are a lot of people that have spelling problems so it is not their fault, But I tend to write my comment then copy and paste it in to word, then let the spellchecker do its stuff then correct mistakes, I dont copy and paste back as the font comes out differant to the rest of the page and post.
Jason Dower
On January 21, 2009 at 1:25 pm,Blog for Bloggers wrote:
I try not to edit comments cause I would probably completely reword them and probably end up saying/asking something completely different. But stuff like the “shameless plugs” get unlinked/deleted and comments with “spammy” sites get either deleted entirely or just simply unlinked. Sometimes I
Nice post
On January 21, 2009 at 2:51 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Jason: ‘Pimping’? Wow. I haven’t heard that term before. Perhaps I need to catch up with the lingo. But yes, that is a huge problem and many people take your approach and often completely delete those comments.
@Blog for Bloggers: Yes, I also find myself doing quite a bit of unlinking or deleting extra links that are placed within comments.
And one thing that I don’t do is censor comments. For example, I have some great comments where my writing skills or opinions were bashed, but they remain. I usually only edit to remove spam and “shameless plugs”.
On January 21, 2009 at 4:49 pm,Jen wrote:
I really only delete comments that are obvious spam. Luckily it either goes one way or the other for me- so far. I either get good comments or complete spam.
I, like you, wouldn’t moderate them though. I think everyone deserves thier opinion and and sometimes a little controversy makes for some good comment conversation.
On January 21, 2009 at 5:59 pm,Kim Woodbridge wrote:
I would just delete them if they are too spammy. I only edit a comment to correct and obvious typo when the commentor is someone who comments frequently. The “teh” and “nad” make me feel bad so I fix them.
On January 22, 2009 at 3:08 am,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Jen: Yes, I agree. Controversy is generally always welcome. You’d be surprised how many ‘new’ things I’ve learned, or how many new ideas I’ve thought of because of comments that challenged my opinions.
@Kim: Well, that’s nice of you. I always feel really unintelligent when I realize that I’ve made an inexcusable spelling mistake.
On January 22, 2009 at 8:14 am,Kurt Avish wrote:
I usually leave the comment as it is even if there are some grammar mistakes but only moderate them when I think that a comment can ruin the decent conversation.
My views:
For The Shameless Link – Normally I leave it if it is a link that a commentator send to share another thing which is related to what i have write. Now if a commenter come and put a link to a viagra website when I am talking about Obama… then for sure I simply SPAM his whole comment!
For the Keyword Marketer – Never got it till now
For the The Spammy Link – I usually visit the links a visitor provides if I don’t know the site already. If it is a spammy link but the comment is good i normally remove the link from his comment.
I also edit comment when at times some visitors put a related link but which is extremely long… such as photoshop api links etc and hence i put the link in html format using href –
And on my blog, there are some people who also come to swear at other people lol. Specially during the very hot post about defimedia. In these cases, I mark the foul words with ***.
Well nice discussion by the way.
On January 22, 2009 at 2:30 pm,Kim Woodbridge wrote:
And my comment has a typo – and instead of an – LOL
On January 22, 2009 at 4:38 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Kim: Haha. I couldn’t decide whether to directly edit your old comment or approve and post a reply… So it appears that you are now featured twice, and you’ve helped to illustrate your point.
On January 22, 2009 at 5:06 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Kurt: Good points, I hadn’t even thought of profanity. I guess my discussions don’t get as heated as yours.
On January 22, 2009 at 10:12 pm,Ajith Edassery wrote:
I delete many comments that don’t convey anything or keyword rich titles and/or oneliners. I do not edit keyword rich comments if they really add value to the conversation.
And you know what, there has been people who requested to edit their comments if needed because of the disclaimer at the end ‘sori for i bad inglish’
On January 22, 2009 at 11:19 pm,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Ajith: Yes, I get quite a few one liners. For example, at least once a day “Nice post!” manages to slip through my spam filter and make it into the legitimate comment queue.
On January 26, 2009 at 7:49 pm,Nihar wrote:
I have edited few comments in the past. only if there was some mistakes made by them or if the comment is good but want to remove the link that they put to get the traffic.
On January 26, 2009 at 11:54 pm,Christopher Hennis wrote:
I am a comment nazi and maybe one out of every 40 or so ever see the light of day. This isn’t -really- because I’m just that obsessive. It has more to do with the fact my website covers a bit of SEO, and in my opinion, no website is spammed more often than a SEO oriented one.
On January 27, 2009 at 3:03 am,Velvet Blues wrote:
@Nihar: Yeh, ever since I wrote this article, it seems like the spammers have been coming in full force, probably to test me. So now, my policy has changed: shameless link in comment = complete deletion.
@Christopher Hennis: Comment Nazi? haha. Yes, I can see you getting a lot of spam on that topic. For this blog, our most frequently spammed article is one that was written about PHPBB, a popular forum CMS (content management system).
On May 11, 2009 at 8:02 am,Lucy wrote:
This leads us to the next question…. Do you go back and check if your comments were approved and/or edited ?
You should get an email notification telling you either way.
Thanks,
Lucy
On June 10, 2009 at 6:43 am,Ingilterede Egitim wrote:
I completely agree, I monitor all my blog sites and remove any junk it has continually. Since not all people are ethical. Some are simple spammers.
On June 11, 2009 at 8:25 am,Christopher Hennis wrote:
It’s quite interesting watching the evolution of comment spam take place in the way that it does. The wordings of the posts become a lot less suspicious and it seems that the automated spams match the blog post’s content a lot better.
On June 20, 2009 at 2:30 am,Perception System – Taufik wrote:
I agree with u but i think instead of editing , delete the comment which one is spam.
On September 2, 2010 at 6:41 pm,showtime professional rotisserie grill wrote:
Well, I basically delete if can clearly tell that comment has nothing to do with my blog or is a blatant plug for their affiliate sites, like someone posted a comment that had nothing but affiliate sites, one after the other. What the bejeebers?!?
I edit if the comment reflected the subject of the post but url was deceiving, like a porn site but url reads homemadecookies.com… LOL
On November 7, 2010 at 8:16 pm,Tobin Crenshaw wrote:
I don’t edit the comments but do have the option to delete them if they are spam or simply offensive.