No Comment

In light of recent posts on many blogs in defense of the publication and dissemination of the Mohammed cartoons in the name of freedom of expression, I wonder if any blogger has reflected on their attitude to blog comments.

Many bloggers warn their readers that "flamers" will not be tolerated in their comments boxes. Others go further still and post a comments "policy" on their sites stating their right to delete comments without explanation. But is there something of hypocrisy in censoring a commenter on your own blog while steadfastly proclaiming the importance of defending freedom of expression in your blog posts?

Like many, I imagine, I got into blogging through first reading blogs and posting in their comments boxes. Now and again I got into contentious quibbles with other commenters. Although I have never "flamed" and I have always tried to avoid emotive language in trying to make my point, I don't have any real problem with flamers as I don't expect other commenters to adopt my own personal standards of what I believe is reasonable debate.

Of course, people will have different ideas about blogs and comments boxes. I suppose many bloggers operate under the idea that they have absolute discretion as to what kind of comment is acceptable or unacceptable on their blogs. For them, comments boxes are the instant equivalent of newspapers' letters to the editor.

Most internet forums have moderators responsible for ensuring that comments are on-topic and not offensive. While I question the necessity for these moderators, I can see the argument in their favour: namely that in this situation the moderators are impartial and their purpose is more or less to facilitate the discussion at hand and protect participants' sensibilities by weeding out the irrelevant and/or offensive posts.

With blogs, however, the people who exercises this job are the bloggers themselves, and in deleting comments they cannot be said necessarily to be facilitating the debate but rather controlling it. Often it is not their readers' sensibilities that they are seeking to protect but their own.

Yahoo and, more recently, Google, have come under fire from free-speech advocates for agreeing to Chinese government demands that they censor their Chinese search engines. Like these free-speech advocates, I believe the internet is a new frontier in the fight for complete freedom of expression and no censorship. To me there is something inherently contradictory in a blogger moderating their comments box.

In recent months I have been drawn to reading Irish blogs and I have often left comments on posts that have interested me. I'm not that au fait with what other Irish bloggers repeatedly refer to as the "Irish blogosphere" but I can see that it is still very much in its infancy. Anybody who reads blogs beyond the Irish sphere will have come across comments boxes with 200 or more responses. Often these comments are comprised of endless backs and forths between two people who steadfastly refuse to take on board any of their adversaries arguments. Often they contain flaming posts which ridicule the blogger. And often they contain lively discussions between two or more people who have long since gone off-topic. Damien Mulley recently asked who the first blogger in Ireland was and he defined "blog" as the first site to allow comments on a page as opposed to in a guestbook. I think it's fair to say that comments boxes are considered to be important parts of a blog (I know that many successful blogs do not offer comments, nevertheless).

As I acquaint myself with the "Irish blogosphere" I am becoming aware of bloggers' tendencies to delete even reasonable comments from their sites. Leaving aside my earlier point about hypocrisy, I wonder, in the interests of seeing the "Irish blogosphere" grow, and while Irish bloggers are engaging in an attempt to find out more about each other's socio-political backgrounds, is now not a good moment for them also to reflect on and discuss the role the comments box has to play in the development of their blogosphere, and the justifications as well as the implications, if any, of deleting comments from their blogs?