Should I Delete Or Keep This Comment?
I received an email yesterday from an Australian reader. It seems that he had left a comment on one of my stories last year — but he doesn’t want it to appear on my blog anymore.
You’ll find his email below. To protect his anonymity, I’m not including his name or the name of the original post he commented on. He writes:
Dear Mr Phillips,
Due to a change in my employment status, I am taking steps to reduce my online presence. Regarding the following post: [Post name deleted]. Could you please be so kind to remove my comment or at least change my name to “anonymous”. I would be very grateful. If you require photo ID from myself confirming my identity, this can be arranged
Thank you and kind regards.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. This reader didn’t merely leave a comment in the comments section—he replied to one of my “Questions of the Week,” and that post had this specific disclaimer:
“Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below. I’ll compile your answers in a post later this week.”
I did exactly that. His comment—a thoughtful one that’s not at all incendiary—was included in a post that compiled several responses. To delete his comment would require me to edit the post slightly and renumber the comments. (That said, the changes would take me just a few minutes to make.)
My feeling is that since he voluntarily submitted a comment and knew how I planned to use it, he should have no reasonable expectation that I should edit, redact, or delete the post. It also sets a bad precedent—once a post is published, I’m not inclined to change it, other than to correct bad information or bad grammar or to help make a point more clearly.
What do you think? Please vote below, and please leave any additional thoughts in the comments section below. (Just don’t expect me to delete them next year!)
[poll id=”31″]
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Nothing is iron-clad, and there are exceptions to almost everything. I agree that you shouldn’t be in the business of revising or deleting comments, but in this case, the commenter wrote you directly with a request and an explanation. I bet you won’t get many more requests like that. I would bet there have been times when you have asked an airline to accommodate you–you had to get on an earlier flight or didn’t feel you needed to pay a change fee. You figured if you asked reasonably and politely, the airline might help you out.
I’m with Deborah. If the guy had been a jerk or if he was trying to recant something inflammatory or “asshatish,” that’s one thing. But he asked nicely and gave what seems to be a reasonable explanation for his request. I don’t think there’s any harm in honoring his request and it’s a decent thing to do. It’s not likely to be a common request, either. You could add a note to the post that says the post was edited to remove someone’s name upon their request.
I think Deborah summarized my thought process pretty well. If it’s possible to do so as an act of kindness from a polite request, do so. Changing the sentiment to an “anonymous” entry seems a reasonable accommodation.
If you became inundated with such requests, you might have to rethink in the future. But that seems a slim possibility.
Save the moral debate for issues of more heft. You aren’t being asked to cover up a crime, or even a particularly fiery opinion from what you’ve explained. Online discussions do live forever, and we’re all still learning how to manage that in our private and professional lives. In the overall scheme, this seems quite minor.
Others have made my case so I’ll keep this short. It’s a respectful, reasonable request.
Thank you all for your comments and votes. It’s early, but since the jury seems pretty unanimous on this one, there’s no need to belabor the point. I’m siding with the wisdom of this blog’s readers. I’ve removed his name from the post, and wrote that his name was withheld at his request.
The reason I wrestled with this in the first place isn’t because this issue is a big deal in itself, but because of the larger standards I try to apply to this blog. My blog, strictly speaking, is not a journalism site – it’s a place for analysis, tips, and commentary. But I do try to apply journalistic standards to the blog – and in a similar situation, I can’t see The New York Times or CNN removing the comment.
But you’ve spoken clearly on this one, and you’re probably right. Thanks for the feedback.
Best wishes,
Brad
I’m not sure about The New York Times site specifically, but many sites allow the writer of a comment to later go back and delete that comment.
Craig,
You raise a good point, and you’re right. However, I think there’s a difference between a comment and a comment that’s been integrated into a news story.
Either way, I’m going with the wisdom of the crowd on this one. Great feedback all around.
Thanks for writing!
Brad
I can see the dilemma, Brad. I voted for changing it to “anonymous,” but if this became a common request, it wouldn’t be feasible for bloggers to accommodate it.
Removing the name from the news story goes beyond inconvenient though. I don’t think there’s any way the NYT or other such pubs would do that. But if removing the name doesn’t affect the integrity of the story, I guess it’s just a judgment call.
I think you did a kind thing by accommodating the request, and maybe that’s what’s most important this time.
I guess I have a slightly dissenting view – I would have deleted the comment, perhaps in this case, but grudgingly. If there were comments that piggybacked on his, though, I would not have deleted it. Also I would ban him from commenting on any further posts, in both cases. There is such a thing as community rules. Maybe I’m a harda*ss I don’t see the rationale for it. You write something, stand by it. Otherwise, refrain from commenting, right?
It’s odd but last week a U.K. blog asked me to delete a link to their blog that I included in a blog post. An OLD blog post. It was relevant. I didn’t cite the any specifc content in their post, just put it at the end of the blog post as a resource for reading more on that topic (along with half a dozen other blogs). it’s not a widely covered topic so it was useful to find the info. They admitted it wasn’t spam. They just didn’t want me to link to their blog, they said, for SEO reasons. How insulting is that? 🙂 I still don’t get that. Take the blog post down, if it bothers you so much, but don’t ask me to not link to a public article, because links come w/the territory. Personally, I am delighted when a relevant blog links to mine!
In both these cases, I think people are being a bit self-important. Who really cares that much about a comment, or if a blog links to your blog?
@Mary Fletcher Jones – I don’t know if you’ve aware, but there are online reports of Google not looking too kindly on blogs or other sites that link to high-traffic ones not relevant to them. It’s likely caused others to, shall we say, be more conscious where they link to and try to clean up as much as they can.
Good call, Brad. In one forum I moderate, we accommodate requests to delete a member’s profile and details, yet we retain their posts as is.