After the slew of hate-comments we received over the weekend, we gave considerable thought to just closing up comments on our posts. So far we are holding off and the main reason is we do like to get feedback, good and bad. The problem here has to do with the blog trolls. Anyone who blogs long enough and allows open comments eventually has to deal with at least two consequences, comment SPAM and trolls. Trolls are the people that, for whatever reason, decide they have to post hateful and very negative things on your blog. They rarely leave their real names, may even impersonate someone else, and sometimes post untruths in order to sway other commenters. Maybe they feel very passionate about something you wrote, maybe they were offended in some way, or maybe they just have too much time on their hands. No one is forcing them to read your blog so who knows all their motivations, but they cheapen the entire blog community with their actions.

We set up this blog to both chronicle C’s development and to keep family and friends informed about our lives. As a nice side effect, we’ve developed a small community of blog friends with similar interests. Allowing open comments helps facilitate this and we don’t want to destroy that. An open discussion is a healthy thing. It allows everyone to see different points of view that maybe one wasn’t aware even existed. Respectful and constructive criticism are good. But when these discussions become inflammatory and insulting, degrade into name calling, or people start actually wishing harm and misfortune on someone, well then the discussion is no longer healthy.

So, how do you deal with the trolls? That is the big question. I don’t yet know of a perfect solution. For now, we are going to leave comments open. This may change depending on how things go on from here. If necessary I’ll make it so any comment has to be approved before it is visible. If that doesn’t work, then maybe we will have to close comments altogether. I don’t want to do either. For now, if you want to post a comment, please do so, but keep it respectful. Don’t agree with me on something? That is fine. Post a counter argument and contribute to the discussion. I have no problem with that. If you keep it respectful and constructive, I’ll let the comment stay up, otherwise it’s gone.

Also, if I see comments on this entry, or any other for that matter, concerning the now infamous post, which led to this post, they’re gone. That subject has been beaten to death and I’ve seen the kind of comments most people want to leave there.