Further to my posting about HP blogger David Gee removing another comment from his blog, here’s a reply to an email I sent him requesting comment:
My May 10 blog posting summarizes my personal opinion on blog censorship well. I stated the following: “Comments, whether positive or negative, are all fair game as the blogsphere resoundingly reminded me last week. Spam, off-topic, or defamatory comments are not appropriate and I reserve the right to remove them. That’s also fair game.” As such, I did pull this blog comment which included foul language. I believe we have the right to remove offensive posts. I would also draw your attention to the coverage this activity received in Slashdot as there is plenty of healthy debate around what’s “acceptable” and what’s not when posted to a corporate blog.
That said, I also believe that we should not be editing incoming comments (ie, remove the foul language), but instead we have the right to remove them per the criteria above. I can only imagine the feedback I’d receive if I started editing comments.
This approach has some merit. But I still have some problems with David’s answers which to my perhaps oversensitive ears have a little too much polish to them to have the authentic feel of a one-person, unfiltered blogger. Or as David puts it: “My blog is my own and I keep it pure by delivering my own unfiltered point of view.” This raises more questions than it answers about corporate blogging, and, to be fair, David is by far the least egregious example of why it doesn’t often work.
Let’s parse again. “Comments, whether positive or negative, are all fair game.” Good. True. “Spam, off-topic or defamatory comments are not appropriate and I reserve the right to remove them.” Hmmm. David before only referred to Spam or defamatory comments, not off-topic, so something is being slipped in here. Should off-topic comments be removed? In a corporate world, off-topic comments may seem to be, as he puts it, ‘fair game’ for removal. It’s like someone talking about something irrelevant in a meeting. He or she would soon be hushed (unless she was the boss.) In the blogosphere, I’m not so sure.
Of course, in a perfect world everyone would stay on-topic. But if they did, Slashdot would be a really boring place to visit, as would most blogs. And who is to decide what is off-topic and what isn’t?
David says, ‘As such, I did pull this blog comment which included foul language. I believe we have the right to remove offensive posts.’ No one likes foul language, but is deletion the only reponse? David points in his post to the BusinessWeek blog post about the topic, in which Heather Green writes the following:
So, we moderate because the magazine doesn’t want to risk that even one or two of the postings on this site ends up being pornographic, racist, libelous, or hateful. If we run into those, it’s likely that we will email the person who sent it and ask them if they want to rephrase. But we don’t delete critical comments, as you have seen.
I think that’s a fair and good solution. And, given that HP blogs require registration before comments are made, HP are in a good position to go back to the poster and seek a rephrase.
All this feeds my sneaking suspicion that a lot of corporations — and the individuals who ‘officially’ blog for them — see blogs as a marketing tool in the traditional form. The evidence is there: Registration before being allowed to comment. No email address for the blogger (I reached David through HP’s Singapore PR division). Lots of on-message stuff in the blog, lots of talk of passion and having lots to say. All true. But that’s not just what blogging is about. Being a corporate blogger means opening a window on your company, and expecting a bit of a bumpy ride. To many people you’re not an individual, you’re a representative of the company. You may not like what you hear in your comments, but you’re duty bound to represent the company and handle customers as you would expect to be handled yourself as a customer. Deleting a comment because you don’t like the way it’s expressed is a bit like ejecting a customer from the store because they seem a little agitated.
David’s area is management software, so elsewhere he could reasonably argue that any comment from a reader that’s not about management software is off-topic. But that’s not, in my view, how corporate blogging works, at least in these early days. Corporate blogs are not just about getting the message out. They’re about getting messages in. David has learned one part of the lesson by reinstating the first comment that he deleted. By deleting the second, and not seeing the problems with that, he’s failed to learn the second: That every reader is a customer, and not everything a customer says may be agreeable.
I wonder if the post would be “un-censored” if the poster changed the word “bastard” to something less “foul” like “jerk,” or “dirtbag” or “idiot?”
Personally, I’m tired of reading other people’s blogs only to find that they’ve choosen 4-letter words to play a major part in their entries, of course, as nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives. Those who choose to use foul language in their blogs are well, how do I put it, uncreative. The more literate and creative you are (and continue to grow and become), the less you use swear words to get your point across. You only degrade yourself when you use foul language to express yourself. No matter what language you speak, there are thousands of words to use other than those crude, 4-letter kind. People, please, when you blog, be a little more creative and tone down on that foul language crap. If you think it makes you more funny, mature, serious or whatever… it doesn’t. Get over it and try using a 15-letter word that means the same thing. That way, you’ll expand your vocabulary and look way cooler than the next schmuck who chooses to curse in his or her rant n’ rave blog.