But, anyway.. if he’s saying that most people don’t understand RSS, why is his next logical step to add additional RSS feeds?

somehow i doubt that lawrence meant those of us who aren’t familiar with rss are less intelligent. he was just suggesting that you offer an alternative to people who want to subscribe to comments (which i don’t necessarily agree with, unless people were requesting it).

Your solution says, “Faithful Reader, we don’t trust you to make a good decision, so we’ll remind you that we don’t trust you over and over again.”

Our solution says, “Faithful Reader, we trust you to do what is right without us telling you how to behave every. single. time. you come to our blog.”

However, I have a problem with your point. First, I think a comment policy, if it exists, should be reprinted in clear unambiguous language right before the comment form itself. Tucking it away in a TOS just isn’t practical considering that many people fly to a page from Googleworld based on a keyword search, leave a comment, and then never return. A post, such as this one, is even more difficult to find (or use to justify the removal of a comment).

The comment rules should be very clear. Unfortunately, just using the words “no nasty grams” could mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. On the one hand, you could be discouraging anyone from making a contrary remark. On the other, you still leave open the door for quite a bit. Plus, as I was recently reminded by a commenter on my own blog, that’s a very American idiom that may not make any sense at all to our English friends overseas. So, more. More details. What isn’t permitted.

On one blog I run, a hyperlocal community blog, I have the following reminder right next to the comment box:

“Comment moderation is on. All comments not in violation of our policies will be accepted shortly. There is no need to resubmit your comment. A valid email address is required. While most comments are approved immediately, and while anonymous commenting is allowed, the editors reserve the right to follow up or to ask for clarification on some comments. They also randomly check the email addresses of comments that seem unusual, out-of-place, overly hostile, or questionable as to their authenticity. Comments without a valid email address are subject to non-approval.”

Granted, this isn’t black and white, even though the words “our policies” link to a more detailed page about what exactly is or isn’t allowed. But the general gist given is “Hey, we want your comment, but please be serious”.

On my personal blog, I’m far more liberal, so I don’t have any rules. If someone uses foul language, I just edit the comment and replace the offending word with a less intense word (i.e. sh*t gets replaced with crap). Basically, I try to keep it PG-13.

On the few occasions where I’ve felt inclined not to approve a comment, I always email the offending person and say something like “Hey, I appreciate your comment and I get your point (really), but I just don’t want this type of vitriol on my personal blog and I also don’t want to edit your words to the point of dulling your meaning. Please reconsider rewording it down to a PG-13 level and repost it and I’ll quickly approve it – and comment on it myself as I do have some interesting thoughts on your position here – but I do have kids. Hope you understand.”. Out of the maybe ten times I’ve sent something like this, half the time they repost it (once even with an apology) and the other half the time, their email address bounces (no surprise).

I think just yanking comments off without fair warning to the commenters is a bad practice.

Although, perhaps not as bad as the practice of removing commenting altogether as suggested by Aegir above. Once you do that, you really become a one-man loudspeaker afraid of honest, transparent, public feedback and for all practical purposes, you cease to run a blog, but a more traditional brochure-style top-down website. Boring. As I’ve written about this before on my own blog, if you’re Steve Pavlina or Seth Godin you can get away with it (although I even took them to task for doing it), but if your you or me or Aegir, you really can’t do that and expect to grow. Commenting is what made blogging popular, not reverse-dated posts.

As a last resort, I’d encourage you to add the “Subscribe to Comments via Email” feature that many W/P blogs are now using. I see you have the RSS version which is great for RSS geeks like me, but most folks on the internet wouldn’t know an RSS feed from “Weed and Feed”. It really helps keep a good thread alive and keeps people coming back to hash out details to come to solutions.

Sometimes moderators and blog owners feel the need to overly moderate those debates when they get a little heated, but I think that’s a mistake. As long as they are staying on topic, not calling each other ridiculous names, and are interested in using your comment feed as a forum for debate, no harm done. You get free content and traffic, they get an outlet for their opinion.

@Katie: the only way I’ve found to get rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. [I've done a lot of that in 50+ years of living.] If prayer is part of your life, then pray over your struggles. If it is not, channel Thumper’s mother and tape “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” across the top of your monitor! Something else that might work is to find a point of agreement and comment on that, and let the other go.

I am guilty of the snarky or angry blog comment thing (not here, though) and I am trying to rid myself of the mental habits that get me there. Clearly it is mental clutter that is in the way of better and far more satisfying uses of my time.

Anybody got tips on getting rid of mental habit clutter?

You’re right, your blog shouldn’t be cluttered with comments that do nothing but take up space and spew ick. Clean out the nasty!