Don’t Delete Negative Comments: Respond To Them
December 1, 2007
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It’s a fact of life when you’re a blogger. Sometimes you’re going to get negative comments to a post on your site. While these certainly aren’t easy to read or deal with, doing so will make you a better blogger in the long run.
Note that I’m not talking about abusive or obscenity-laden comments here. A comment like that on my site would get killed before it ever saw the light of day.
The type of comment that I’m talking about is one that takes a stance against your post. If nothing else, perhaps it will make you take another look at what you wrote - maybe you’ll see it in a different light.
Or maybe you’re a company blogger, and you’re getting negative feedback on a product of yours. Respond to it publicly. Address it, and you’ll do much more for your company if you show that you care about customer feedback.
Robert Scoble was an excellent example of a company blogger - evangelist. He posted stuff about Microsoft that people wouldn’t have expected to see, even pointing out when he thought that Microsoft was coming out with crappy stuff. He recommended that application developers respond to customer feedback on blogs. Did it make all of the products instantly better? No. But did it open Microsoft up to the public in a different way? Absolutely. It made readers realize that there are people up there in Redmond who really care about putting out good stuff. Some is better than others, yes, but the point is that responding to both positive and negative feedback can work to your advantage in the long run.
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December 1st, 2007 at 9:07 am
I disagree!
You should require any who wants to comment to register and brutally moderate all comments. The first whiff of dissent should be dealt with by banning said commentator for life from your site! Your site, you rule!
(Just kidding, but there are blogs around that have this attitude.)
On a serious note, I disagree with closing comments after a certain like you’re doing. Remember a lot of visitors will arrive via Google long after the original post. Not allowing them to post a belated comment discourages them from continued participation on your site.
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December 1st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hey, a negative comment! Cool
Seriously, though, I know that there are sites like you describe, and as soon as I discover I’m on one, I’m gone from there.
As for the comment closing, it’s configurable for longer periods, and if someone comments the day before closing, it’ll actually extend the time another 60-90 days.
I may actually wind up pulling it off sometime in the future. We’ll see.
December 1st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I agree…Feedback, even the negative kind, is always useful. It gives you fresh perspectives and allows you to maybe tailor future posts to your audience’s wants. I would close comments on contests entries if they are no longer running, but I haven’t closed it on any of my other posts.
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December 1st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Exactly. If you never get any sort of negative feedback, you’ll never know if you’re going in in a direction that the readers don’t really want you to go.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 am
[...] Rod Templeton wrote a post on BloggingNotes.net in which he suggested you shouldn’t delete negative comments but respond to them instead. [...]
December 5th, 2007 at 7:38 am
[...] go along with Rod’s post on responding to negative comments, there’s also another type of negative comment that doesn’t deserve a response - The [...]
December 5th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I agree about letting negative comments go through. Every blogger needs to respond to them as that is what makes them credible since they need to support how their post reflects their views and opinion on the matter.
On the other hand, abusive and insulting comments should never be tolerated. I have been experiencing this and lately had to turn on comment moderation. I had written an article on “10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Comment On Blogs”, I would love to leave a link here but that would be against my own policy. I have emailed you a link if you would like to read it which proves my point as why commenting shouldn’t be abused, the main reason being it is one of the best tools for communicating and networking.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for the comment, Ritu. I agree that it’s important for bloggers to allow constructive criticism or negative feedback through. Discussion, and being open to differing opinions is something that makes blogs great.
But abusive/insulting comments won’t make it through here. They’ll immediately be deleted, no questions asked. This is not a democracy - it’s my site and my bandwidth. If someone wants to flame my ideas, that’s fine and encouraged. But attacking me personally will get you nowhere.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:39 am
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