Standard Disclaimer:
I am not an attorney and any comments I post are not intended, nor should they be construed, as legal advice. If you need legal advice, please consult a legal expert who is familiar with the area of legal expertise you need.
This blog post is in response to a re-blog post that I re-blogged – Blog Comments and Censorship — Mental Health @ Home. Original post: https://mentalhealthathome.org/2019/07/30/blog-comments-and-censorship/.
You are free to run your blog / vlog however you want to, but be aware that there can be consequences for allowing comments that you don’t monitor. In the original post, a point was made about copyright. It’s a valid point and something lost on many bloggers and vloggers. I regularly see copyright violations on blogs, YouTube, and other video sites.
If you violate copyright enough on YouTube, you get sent to Copyright School: https://www.youtube.com/copyright_school. Do it enough times and you may find yourself getting banned from YouTube. I was curious so I voluntarily went to Copyright School. End result – some of their points are not clear or don’t go far enough.
I have rules for comments on my blog: no profanity (feel free to do the comic strip route of @%&* if you feel the need to cuss in a comment. Two, no politics and I don’t care if it’s attacking/defending a politician where I would agree with your points. Respect – this is my blog; treat me with disrespect and don’t expect your comment to get approved. I have no problem with agree to disagree comments if they are respectful. Religion kind of depends as some points I wouldn’t have an issue with and some I would.I have a pretty thick skin as a result of being bullied when I was younger, but that doesn’t mean I am going to let someone try and bully me on my blog. You don’t have to agree with what I post, but as Ashley pointed out, this isn’t your blog. As some of the commenters have said, don’t like it, post it on your own blog.
I was an admin, but not site owner of a PC gaming forum. When I was made moderator and later admin, I had one rule of thumb. I would stay with the site as long as I was not ashamed of how the site was going. Over 10+ years ago, the site owner added a private board that was only available to those who had reached so many posts or comments. Initially, it went well. However, a few years later, the site owner decided to turn this private board into a flame board. He wanted to generate more interest in the forums, but the way he worded the board description, it was obvious it was a flame board. The site had been known as a site where respect was not only expected, it happened. However, once the private board became a flame board, that went out the window. I wasn’t the only one who left. I believe a fair number of people left as the attitude of those who participated in the flame board had a bad habit of spilling over into the other boards.
When I comment on other bloggers or vloggers walls, I do my best to be respectful and observe any known rules and other common courtesy things. Same for when I post on social media.
I will say if you don’t know why you should approve comments, Ashley mentions the “NYC Midnight forum” as an example. I am not familiar with that forum, but have seen similar forums in PC gaming sites where flame wars were the norm.
Ups Downs Family History 