Is there any reason to allow offensive anonymous blog comments?
(This is a guest author article.)
CLARIFICATION: Following a few commenters who misunderstood the whole point of my post, I would like to clarify a few points. When I say "allow anonymous comments" I mean "allow them to remain on your blog" rather than "block them out at the source" which is practically impossible. Also my defintion of anonymous in this article is any insulting comment from an unknown source.
Admin Note: The post title has been slightly altered to more accurately reflect the meaning of the question.
I recently read a few random (mostly anonymous) trollish and insulting comments on a few blogs and have been thinking about this issue seriously.
Do you allow anonymous comments on your blog(s)? Have you ever considered why you should? Is there any reason why random strangers should be allowed to spew their vitriol on space that you rent/own/pay for? Let me make it clear at once that I'm talking about those nitwits who drop one post on your blog insulting you, leave behind no identifiable information and diss your opinion or anything else you consider worthy of respect. I'm not talking about people who are courageous enough to stand behind their opinions, no matter what and are willing and open to honest debate and I'm not talking about those rare occasions when people have a genuine need to protect their identity.
I've yet to find a reason for why so many blog writers keep allowing comments without even requiring a name/handle. It is just as good as, or better than an open invitation to spam your website. Maybe it's the default setting on your blog software that allows anonymous comments. Maybe you are new to blogging and feel that commenting should be encouraged in every way possible and that anonymous comments might encourage more people to freely express their opinions. All I can say to that is I've found that respectable bloggers and commenters do not try to hide or run away after leaving behind their opinions. People who post credible information do not hide behind a nonsense handle or an invalid e-mail ID. It's those who leave behind a trail of crap who're too scared to let their identities come out in the open. And don't fall for that "Freedom of Speech" nonsense. Freedom of Speech does not include pissing on private property, anonymously or not. Since anybody with a half-decent internet connection has the freedom create their own blogs (hint: http://www.blogger.com/start 
) and even remain completely anonymous in the process, the "freedom" point is moot and doesn't hold water in this context. Point is, there are no dearth of legitimate opportunities to express one's opinions, no matter how distasteful or crude they might be. Anonymous hate-mongering on other blogs' commenting areas is not one of them.
I for one, do not allow anonymous comments on my blog Hari's Corner. My definition of anonymous commenters in this context is
- people who leave behind no e-mail ID and/or website url and
- in my judgement, are merely trying to bait me or my readers for their pleasure.
If I find such comments, my first instinct is to delete. I don't care if people cry "censorship". The point is: submitting feedback on any website is a privilege, not a right. And I have every right to clean out what I consider spam on my website. If these cowardly anonymous hypocrites don't like it, that's no skin off my nose. In fact, I'd prefer to be known as a tyrant and a dictator in that context.
Why should some unknown idiot insult you and leave behind an e-mail ID like aaa@bbb.ccc and without revealing his/her own website's URL? I think 99% of blog commenters are other blog owners themselves. All those anonymous commenters are just people who don't want you to visit their blog for fear of retaliation. They cannot stomach the same harsh criticism that they dealt to you.
The bottom line is that anonymous insults not only hurt the author, but the other regular readers of a blog as well. They are an unproductive waste of space, add nothing to your blog and you are better off without them. So what if a few well-intentioned, but misguided idealists criticize you for that decision in the name of "censorship" or "Free Speech" and expect you to tolerate insults in order to uphold their principles? 
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Thats right. But most of the 'Blogger' users prefer to allow anonymous comments because the blogger gives three options for comments to post.
Registered Users
Members of this blog
Anyone
Now, i dont really want to allow anonymous commetns and I don't know how to edit the comment's code so that I may do away with this anonymous commenting. (If anyone can,then inform me,plz)
Also,when you you leave comments as 'Other'
the options you get are 'Name' & 'Website' only! What if someone doesn't have a website of his own.. I have seen comments in which Blogger has assigned fake blogger profile addresses to the commentators!
I'm one of the lucky ones. I've only had one or two of these kinds of commenters in over a year. I didn't consider them bad enough to delete, but I would if I felt personally insulted.
Abhinav, I'm not sure about blogger.com. It's not got the best commenting system among blogging tools.
RT, I've not got too many either. But then I steer clear of controversial topics also.
I've had people disagree strongly with me at times and that's OK by me as long as there is no name-calling.
I would hate to cut anyone off from commenting on my blog – but if they do comment and they're nasty, I reserve the right to delete it – I have done it before, and I'd do it again.
Snoskred
http://www.snoskred.org/
Snoskred, I'm not sure I understand your first sentence. What did I write which suggests cutting off any legitimate commenters? If I conveyed that impression I'd like to correct it.
Most people (who comment on blogs or participate in online communities) have an internet nickname (handle) and an email Id they can use to post comments under (even throwaway e-mail ids). And since E-mail Ids are hidden from everybody except the blog admin, I cannot see why anybody would object to that! If people have objection sharing their work e-mail for this purpose, they should create a throwaway one to use for such purposes.
I do allow anonymous comments on my blog, is what I mean when I say I would hate to cut anyone off.
I have the power to delete the comments once they've been made – that's when I would take care of anything inappropriate. So there's really no need to turn off anonymous comments – if I'm going to be away for a couple of days I can either switch on moderation or ask a friend to keep an eye on it for me.
Snoskred
http://www.snoskred.org/
But I was wondering what prevents people from posting a comment with a name and a valid e-mail Id… It's not really a road-block to commenting to expect people to post under a nickname…
And besides, the main point of my post is not about preventing any kind of anonymous comment (which is practically impossible as people can still use false handles and invalid e-mail ids) and some anonymous comments can still be acceptable. It was about not having to tolerate their insults just to uphold a silly notion of "Free Speech" when it, in fact, does not apply in that situation.
It's not so much anonymous commenting which is the problem, but the fact that people abuse that feature to post all kinds of rubbish against you which they wouldn't have the courage to if they had to reveal their identity.
Oh, ok. That wasn't what I got from your article.. you asked if we allow anonymous comments and I said I did but I delete them if they're nasty, and then we got into some kind of circular thing that I'm not quite understanding.
Because I thought you were saying prevent all anonymous comments, especially when you said it in your post.
I think maybe the bit that confused me was where you said you don't allow anonymous comments and what you mean by that is anyone who doesn't use their email id or website but then you kind of went off on a tangent about anonymous insults. I'm a bit confused really.
I think you might be taking the anonymous insults and comments on your blog a little bit personally, which is probably what they were trying to achieve when they wrote them. Let me point out a couple of ideas to you which might help. It's all about how you look at things. You can choose to look at these negative anonymous comments in any manner of ways, but a couple I suggest considering are..
1. The very fact that someone is "trolling" you means you must be doing something right – they are probably jealous of your success and incapable of having any kind of success themselves, which is why they resort to posting blog comments anonymously, to make themselves feel better, to get a thrill, to get a reaction from people which normally they would not get any reaction – eg if they made a blog of their own nobody would turn up to read it.
2. You get to choose how you react – if you quietly delete their comment and say nothing, they get nothing. Trolls want attention. Don't give it to them.
3. As my thought of the day said today – If someone offers you a gift, and you decline to accept it, the other person still owns that gift. The same is true of insults and verbal attacks. – Steve Pavlina
4. You're right when you say they can't take it in return and that's why they don't give their name, email or website. How much attention you want to pay to people so cowardly is all up to you – again you can choose to simply ignore their stupidity, delete their comments as soon as you can and turn on moderation for a bit (they don't like moderation, they won't hang around for long once you turn it on) and then you can get back to the normal business of blogging because their attention will go elsewhere fairly quickly when they don't get that reaction.
5. In general, I find people who do this type of anonymous commenting are in fact guys who have really tiny genitalia which they're going to spend their lives trying to deal with. Sad, but true. I've never felt inspired to leave an anonymous comment, so I would probably have an enormous set of genitalia, if I were a guy. But I'm not. So, even though I'm a chick, I have a bigger set of balls than they do.
I mean if they had a big set of balls they'd use their name, email and web address, and they probably wouldn't be out making nasty comments. Can you imagine how miserable their lives are? We must feel compassion for them in the minute nanosecond we bother to consider their opinion before we hit delete.
I've probably confused you now, but Hari, take it like water off a ducks back – they're not worth getting upset over.
Actually I was talking about other blogs. On my blog I rarely get any insults. Maybe i'm not doing something right
@Abhinav – The only way that you can stop anonymous comments is by changing it to Registered Users (as I would suspect you've already figured out). Also, those people with "fake" blogger profiles might just not be allowing their profile pages to be seen by everyone.
Hari, I have to say that I agree with what Snoskred said about your post – I got the impression that you were saying that we shouldn't be allowing anonymous comments on our blogs. Personally, I do allow them and don't really have an issue with it because I know that if something goes awry, I can always delete the offending comment and move on.
Sephyroth
http://www.sephyroth.net/
To clarify the post a bit:
Allow anonymous comments == allow anon comments to remain.
Anonymous in this context == People I don't know and who insult me.
I thought it would be obvious since it's practically impossible to prevent posting of anonymous comments in any way.
I don't mind allowing anon comments – it is rare that I get abusive comments (really it was only on my article about Firefox that I had some nasty comments and they were easy to delete) and I know I would rather post on a site that allows anon post or at least is easy to post – no captcha systems or being a member.
I guess it changes if you get dozens and dozens of replies to each and every post but I don't get that and nor do most blogs.
Yeah, those comment volumes are reserved for UV!!
Folks I've clarified the context in which I used the words "anonymous" and "allow" in this post which seems to cause a lot of confusion.
It depends on the site. If it's just a personal blog by Joe Blow, who cares what people comment. But if it's a blog on a site for which the owners are legally responsible for the content (like a federal government Web site), then the owners MUST moderate the content in order to serve the public good. For example, it would not be appropriate for the F-word to appear on a government Web site.
Excellent Post. My compliments to the author.
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You should just remove them.
So long as you're quick to moderate abuse, it doesn't matter who comments.
When the site owner has some responsibility to the public (ie gov't sites), comments should be moderated first before everyone else can see them.
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Anonymous comments should be deleted. They are of consistently low quality so they tend to add nothing to the page. Also, having a name with the comment makes it feel more personal. Of course someone could fake their email address so unless you actually send them a message you can't know if it's really them. Maybe a system to send an auto-responder with an encoded (with comment ID#) link that the poster would then have to click to verify might solve that issue. No clicky, no posty!
Interesting and informative, but would be suffering with something more on this topic?
It is hard to get rid of annonimous comments, they should be deleted if you have the time and patience of doing so.
I guess it changes if you get dozens and dozens of replies to each and every post but I don't get that and nor do most blogs.
Sergio
http://www.freshsalvia.com