Colliding with Error - Removing Blog Comments You Dislike
When someone leaves a comment on your blog you don’t like, “Should the blog author be allowed to remove it?”
The choices are simple:
- Yes, of course the blog author can remove comments s/he doesn’t like.
- Yes, but only if they violate clearly posted guidelines (such as obscenity)
- No since blogging and commenting are conversations and people can’t make clear determinations about that conversations without full access.
Some might argue that if the anonymous commenter wanted to make a negative comment, s/he might have posted it on their own blog. That way, it wouldn’t matter whether the blogger found their comment objectionable or not…she couldn’t do anything about it.
Why should bloggers allow comments they disagree with?
- It allows them access to “erroneous” ideas they may try to correct.
- It presents them with the opportunity to explore their thinking on an issue that they otherwise might have missed entirely.
- It gives others who might not have said anything to speak up to refute an idea by the blogger or the commenter.
- It helps us all learn to appreciate that dissent isn’t bad.
Finally, I suppose the best reason is one that is captured in this 1859 quote from John Stuart Mill’s Essay on Liberty:
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is that it is robbing the human race…if the opinion is in the right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.
—John Stuart Mills, “Essay on Liberty” (1859)
Should a person blog who has no interest in experiencing a “collision with error” as described above?
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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure