-Comment Policy–Why it’s a Good Idea!"

Anyone who’s been publishing a blog for a while has received comments that are inappropriate for a Christian site–comments full of obscenities or bearing links to pornography–or comments that you would rather not have published on your blog.

There are always those Christians who consider it their mission to drop pre-written articles into the comment line of any post that comes close in anyway to their specialty issue. Mention ‘baptism’ in a post and you might receive an unsolicited 2 page teaching on "why infant baptism is a false practice"–posted on the comment line. You may even agree with the teaching but it really doesn’t respond in any way to the original post–what do you do?

On other occasions you might receive a ‘comment’ that is longer and more detailed than the original post–usually in opposition to what your take is. Then there are those who show up and choose to use the comment line as an opportunity to make a promotional announcement or post a veiled commercial link–how do you respond?

I have even received an angry email when I edited or deleted one of those 2 page off-topic ‘comments’. I didn’t have a policy posted at the time.

Every blogger eventually faces commenting problems and must develop some standards on how to respond. At first you’re happy when anyone shows up and leaves a comment. later when your blog actually has some traffic, all the spam begins to show up.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you already have developed a policy–you might as well let your readers and commenters in on it. If you’re brand new, you might take a look at the comment policies on some of your favorite blogs and settle on some principles to start with.

Here’s my Comment Policy –probably more than most of you will want or need. 

It’s really a good idea to let your readers in on your comment policies and expectations. Especially if you are a Christian blog with different ideas of acceptability than the general blogosphere. That way there will be no excuses and readers will be able to respond more appropriately in their comments.