Anyone Care for Comments?

Last month I was asked by another blogger if I would delete a comment where a commenter had named (outed) the identity of an individual allegedly involved in a certain situation. I had no problem with that, other than being careful when messing with stuff I've "set" within the Blogger platform. I try to rock Blogger's boat as little as possible: for example, there is only one PC I use when I mess around with the template, because I have some Chinese language links that disappear if I edit the template from any PC that does not have International language packs installed.

Having said that, I did successfully remove said comment, although all of the traffic attracted to that post had already dried up completely. That post has not been visited at all in the last 30 days, except by the person who wanted it removed (I can see all this with my site-trackers). I don't think it did any damage, but it raised my curiosity about posts and comments, and I found this neat little article by Reasonable Man from 2005: Who owns blog comments? Here are a few short excerpts:

"...the author of a blog comment could request that his/her comment be removed from a blog. While it is an easy process to remove a comment, the harm to a blog could be substantial. Especially if the comment removed is central to the community d iscussion/dialogue around a given topic. This could severely impact the value of a blog and reduce its following/readership."

From "Comments" "On the question of removal of comments, one problem is that it is impossible to validate the owner of comments on many blogs. Unless you require some sort of authentication for commenting, anyone can post a comment and say that they are you. Likewise, anyone can ask you to remove a comment and claim that they made it. So you might end up removing a legitimate comment on the request of someone who didn't actually leave it."

I also found a newer article (January 28, 2007) about comments on the revenews site. It's titled Legal Issues with Blog Comments which brings up IP tracking. I'm wondering if in the case of blogspot blogs Google could provide such information, as the site metering device I use only displays data for the last 100 visitors. Previous data is overwritten, although they might keep info on their servers (but I doubt that). So, it is a fuzzy fuzzy area.

I've ranted about comments in the past: I wish I could attract the kind LaShawn Barber does: her comments section looks more like a message board or forum: it's a dialog. The closest I've come to that recently was with my Beyonce post the other day... Pajamas Media blogger Michelle Malkin doesn't allow comments but does allow trackbacks, and in the blue bar of her trackback pop up box it clearly says "Discussion" --- I've tried to leave every door open, so that anyone visiting my blog for the first time may find something they're already familiar with, be it "comments," "trackback," "tags" or "categories." I've also thrown in a "digg" link, and thankfully some readers have used it. Bottom line: if you visit me here, feel free to comment, as I provide two ways to do it, through standard Blogger / Blogspot commenting or via Haloscan's system.