Image via WikipediaI have been writing this blog for a little over two years now. In that time, I have never used comment moderation, and I have never deleted a comment. Not that there hasn't been times that I wanted to delete a comment or two. There have been a few comments over the last two years that made me consider deleting them. A few people would make comments that weren't germane to the topic at hand. Things such as "found your blog while adgitizing," or the occasional person who would post a Bible verse without really tying it in to the topic of the post. Lord know that any time Len from "First Door on the Left" would drop by with a comment, I usually ended up with blood shooting out of my eyes because he would make me so mad.
As I said, I have never deleted a comment on the blog. I have always tried to have an open dialogue here. That is until today. I deleted my first comment today. Not because I found the comment offensive or it made me angry. Nope, it was such an obvious piece of spam that I felt that I really had no choice in the matter. I don't mind folks commenting on a Music Monday post promoting their own blog and their Music Monday choices, but this was a blatant, "come to my commercial website and buy something" kind of comment.
Which leads me to this question for my fellow bloggers. I know that several bloggers use comment moderation and approve all comments before they appear. Do you find that it is worth the extra effort to approve comments before they appear? For those that don't use comment moderation, do you find yourself deleting spam comments? I have to say that spam has not been a huge issue, but I don't want it to become one. I have always liked the immediacy of not having moderation so that readers can interact with one another before I have the chance to review the posts.
