Tuesday, February 13th, 2007...7:58 pm
No Free Speech Here
Today on my other blog I deleted a comment that I felt was tasteless and unhelpful. Before I hit delete I asked D what he thought and immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut. He mentioned things like ‘compromising my blog’s integrity’ and the like. My poor little head felt like exploding.
I think D’s point is that we should be able to deal with criticism, difference of opinions or people expressing themselves in different ways. Perhaps a better way to deal with negative remarks would be to keep the comment and reply to it, putting a positive spin on the comment.
I agree in principal, but I also think that people with non-constructive comments/criticism should just f**k off, maybe get their own blog if they want to be nasty.
Anyway, in this particular case I feel I was right to delete the comment. It was posted in a recipe for mussels, picked up at Scarborough Seafest, and the commenter claimed to have made the recipe and then proceeded to ‘piss it out of [his] ass’ for two days. ‘Never again’ he said. I deleted it because it was not constructive and was rather tasteless in the context of a recipe blog. I mean, would you make a recipe with a review saying that a person who had made it pissed it out of their ass for two days? I think not! A constructive comment would have been to say that he had given himself food-poisoning and to say that it is very important to be careful with shellfish, making sure that mussels are fresh.
I have no pity for people who give themselves food-poisoning.
6 Comments
February 13th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I rarely delete comments but reserve the right to do so whenever I bloody well feel like it.
It’s your blog.
February 15th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Yes I think you are right to delete comments. I got a really nasty one a couple of weeks ago and I left it in although it upset me. I didn’t delete it on the basis that it made the person who left it look worse than me. I did get support from other commentators as well which cheered me up.
I think comments which are nasty for the sake of it should be deleted immediately. If someone left dog shit on your door step you wouldn’t think twice about getting rid of it.
I didn’t read that comment but I’m guessing that someone who reads food blogs and follows recipes from them is not that likely to leave really horrible comments so they were probably a liar as well as foul mouthed.
(btw I got some satisfaction out the fact that it took me all of five minutes to find out the real identity of my nasty commentator and his phone number at work - of course I didn’t do anything with it.)
February 15th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Just right, too. There’s no need to be crude even if you have been stupid enough to give yourself food poisoning.
February 15th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Ahh I thought I’d left a comment here earlier today but it has disappeared or maybe *gulp* it has been deleted. I had a horrible comment left on my blog a week or so ago. It really, really upset but I left it on because it wasn’t truly offensive just nasty and mean-spirited. I thought it would give the person too much satisfaction if I had deleted it and by leaving it on it allowed other people to support me.
I think you can delete what you like. If someone leaves dog poo on your door step you’d get rid of it pretty quickly and the same goes for offensive comments on blogs.
Sounds like the person was lying anyway - it is not likely that someone who reads and follows recipes from a blog would write that kind of thing.
February 15th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
ps I forgot to say that I derived some satisfaction against the nasty commentator by working within about 5 minutes their real name, their place of work and their telephone extension. Most people don’t realise quite how easy it is to find people on the net - of course I would never dream of using this information. I am not a mad stalker.
February 16th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Ganching - your comment is reinstated, seems Askimet thinks you are a spammer!
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