Editing comments: think first

Doing my Community Director duties, I started reading notes. The very first note was Editing Comments. I read the note and walked away from my computer, shaking my head. This is why Systems Thinking is important. It forces the blogger to view the entire picture. Like the legalities of editing someone else’s copyrighted comment.

Or by making it grammatically correct, changing the tone of the original comment.

Or by not having the tools in place for the commenter to correct mistakes it is unfair to hold them to a higher standard.

Or by editing (and it will be found out) people won’t feel comfortable. It’s like going to someone’s house and the place is so pristine you don’t want to mess it up.

Or thinking anyone would actually believe a blogger/writer would edit grammatical errors but would let any negativity remain.

Once you edit the comment (even to take out cursing), if you get sued, you can’t throw the blame on the commenter anymore but it is not the commenter’s words as they were originally written. Above the comments, put a note: “I don’t allow cursing. I have added common curse words to the spam filters. You curse, you comment will be deleted.” That throws the responsibility back on the commenter.

Comments are a direct reflection of the commenter’s thoughts, personality, etc. and have zero reflection on the blogger/writer. I cannot grasp why anyone would want to change that.