MamaBlogga

Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others. You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.

—Fauna, Sleeping Beauty

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten negative comments, but last week I had a few. Some were allowed to stay. But they progressively got worse and violated the written comment policy here on MamaBlogga and some were deleted.

While we’ve discussed handling negative comments here before, I’ve seen a few good posts on this around the blogosphere lately. Last month, ProBlogger had a guest post about dealing with negative comments. The author reminds us:

A good rule of thumb is that nasty or negative comments are never about you or what you’ve written, they are always about the person who wrote them. (Even if people disagree with what you’ve said, most of them can do it in a sane & respectful fashion.)

(Hence the quotation from Sleeping Beauty above.)

She addresses both the drive-by troll (”Delete their comment & if what they’ve said is really nasty, just ban them. You don’t need the strife!”) and the long-time commenter turned nasty (to whom she sends a friendly email).

Just last week, Scribbit posted about this issue, too. She said:

Be careful how you treat readers, even the negative ones. Not just for fear of them never returning—rude ones probably never will anyway—but because it’s common courtesy and because they’re people too with thoughts and opinions that won’t always mesh with yours and darn it, that’s what makes the world so exciting. Who knows? Maybe they’re even right once in a while.

She also included a very fun flowchart for guidance on whether to delete nasty comments.

On my work blog, I delete almost nothing but spam and blatant self-promotion—and I get a lot more nasty (and dumb) comments over there. I’m slowly learning to walk away from people who simply aren’t listening to me while trying to engage in a “debate” (though this would normally be called a “monologue”).

But here on MamaBlogga, a personal, mom blog, I can delete with impunity, and I have deleted more than just spam comments. I still feel a little weird about it sometimes, though. Do you have any qualms about deleting rude, mean or simply borderline comments?

I haven’t had to do this on here very often, but pretty regularly on my work blog, I have people comment who are . . . well . . . less than nice, we’ll say (or just wrong). While sometimes it’s pretty easy to handle comments I don’t really appreciate over there (often with more facts to back up my story), it’s a lot harder to do that in the realm of mom blogging.

If you’re posting about how cute your kids are or how you’re struggling with this behavior or how you’ve come to a self-discovery, it’s more than just annoying to have someone contradict you or treat you unkindly. It’s a bit of a personal affront—sometimes even an attack on your children or your parenting!

There are a few ways you can handle this. The best ways (the ways you would tell your children to handle this):

1. Ignore it. If you’re really lucky, your bloggy friends will even come to your defense. Just the other day, I saw a friend of mine share a personal story and someone called her out for being unchristlike. I was the first person there after that comment was left, and I vehemently (but hopefully respectfully) disagreed. Several subsequent commenters did the same.
2. Settle it privately. If your blogging platform allows, email the person directly. You could explain that, while you don’t particularly appreciate the way that they’ve phrased their concerns, you’d like to know if there’s something you could do better in your blogging (or parenting, if you’re really feeling generous) in the future.
3. Use concrete facts. If the person is disagreeing with a factual assertion (instead of just your opinion), you can provide more information on the facts you’re citing, such as their sources.
4. Point to your blog comment policy. If you’ve already written one, and this comment violates the guidelines you’ve set forth, inform the commenter privately (via email) or publicly (via the comments on that post). Take whatever action you say you will in your policy (deleting the comment, banning the commenter, etc.)

Possibly less productive:

5. Call them out. In the very next comment you make, point out that they’ve been unkind, that that kind of behavior would be unacceptable from your children, and it’s unacceptable on your blog.

Downright counterproductive:

6. Tit for tat. Reflect everything they’ve said back on them in your next comment or, worse yet, track down their blog and make a similar comment.

There are a few other solutions that I’m not sure what category to put them in:

7. Play the martyr. Face it, we’re moms: we can do this with the best of them. As we should all remember from being children, guilt trips and the martyr card don’t really solve anything though.
8. Delete it. If your comment policy says you’ll delete abusive comments, or negative comments, do it. If you don’t have a comment policy, the general bloggy community shuns deleting comments just because they disagree with you. However, on a personal blog—it’s your blog.
9. Block that commenter. Depending on the nature of the comment, it may take only one comment to warrant blocking them, especially if it’s in your comment policy. Even if it’s not, it’s your blog, your family and you. Protect them if you feel you need to.

What do you do when you receive a negative comment? What has worked for you? What hasn’t?

More WFMW.

I’ve had a couple polls on here lately, and I figured you might want to see some of the results!

The first poll was about Blog Comments and You.

With more than 100 total responses, the blog comments poll was designed to help me (and now you) understand how you prefer to interact with blog comments. The most popular responses:

• I notice and appreciate it if the blogger gets involved in the comment conversation 27% (33 votes)
• I read blog comments from time to time 21% (26 votes)
• If I see there are comments on a post, I’ll almost always read them 18% (22 votes)
• I often check back on a post that I’ve commented on 15% (19 votes)
• I get involved in a conversation with other readers in the comments 13% (16 votes)

What does this mean for me (and you)?

• People notice if you, the blog author, respond in the comments. I need to be better about this!
• A lot of people read comments very consistently—but a lot read them intermittently.
• A good amount of people will check back on a post they’ve commented on to see responses.
• Some people get involved in a conversation with other readers in the comments.

So what should you do?

• Encourage comments on your blog to get the conversation started.
• Respond to comments (at least some of the time) on your blog or, if possible, via email.
• Subscribe to comments when commenting on others’ blogs to follow blog conversations.

The second poll, How often should a blogger post?, requires a bit less analysis: 77% voted for two to five times a week, with a few more in the four-five times category. (I was asking because I was worried that I might be posting too much—or pushing myself to post more often than I needed to!)

For more insights on the polls’ responses, read the comments on each post (Blog comments and you and How often should a blogger post).