I’m a regular reader and “comments contributor” on numerous blogs. A lot of the blogs I frequent are competitors blogs, expecially those I would have respect for in their area of expertise. For example, I regularly read articles from RedFlyMarketing, RedCardinal and iQContent. I do have one major problem with all of them, they don’t blog enough!! 
Seriously though, the articles from all three are generally highly interesting with great insight into how these masters work.
But I was very disappointed recently with one blog. In a nutshell, when the hype died down on one of their articles that had a fair bit of interest, they removed MY comments. Not only did they remove my comments, but they also removed all comments that were in context to my response and opinion.
I have to admit, I’m not the type to comment on a blog unless I have a strong opinion on it. The majority of times it’s when I disagree with something, or possibly if I agree with something and want to add more weight to the point.
In this case, yes I disagreed with their point of view. They seemed to huddle in a corner and throw stones at me in the shape of their “technical staff” to try and dispell my point. Unfortunately for them, their “techie” wasn’t aware of an issue that contradicted the article and all his previous points in response to my intial comment.
Anyway, with my last response to “techie” person, he was left with nothing else to say - he didn’t acknowledge that he was wrong or even say “we’ll beg to differ”, he just didn’t respond.
I guess why I’m writing this article is to get peoples opinions. If a blog opens up it’s articles to a public forum with comments, shouldn’t they at least have the decency to leave someone’s opinion there for everyone to see?
I can understand that it might not have made them look terribly knowledgable, but why allow people to comment - if they only want comments favourable to them? Sure they might as well just remove the comment option altogether.
I agree that there are cases where comments need to be censored. If the comments are rude, defammatory etc. But what about someones opinion, does this not count? Should it count?
Personally, I wouldn’t remove comments from my blog unless they were rude or defammatory. If they disagreed with me, I’d simply use the blog as a forum to get my point across. If I got something wrong, I’d do the honourable thing and hold my hands high and admit it…
Hey Tom,
Some good points there. I completely agree that if you’re going to have a blog open to comments only rude or defamatory comments should be removed. As you can tell on teh RFM blog, some articles I have been called out on but we would never just leave them unanswered or delete them. It actually makes the writer look worse.
Thanks for the mention too. The problem with blogging is that it can generate so much business. More business means less time to blog. Blogging is a like a “lead tap” sometimes.
Keep up the fantastic posts yourself!
Hi Tom,
thanks for the mention and I hope it wasn’t our blog. If it was, let me know the article and I’ll look to approve the comment.
We’re all for healthy debate and strong opinions so we’d never knowingly remove a comment for simply disagreeing with us or even for putting us right.
Laurence (iQ Content)
I’d prefer not to say publicly who it is if that’s ok. I’m not the name and shame type of person… Unless you are LuzernTech