I am a big fan of comments on this blog. I really enjoy interacting with those who visit.
I am not a big fan of people who feel it is necessary to leave extremely nasty and vile remarks. Luckily, that hasn't been too much of a problem until today.
Today, somebody left a comment on the FBI Citizens' Academy post that was not aimed at having conversation about the topic. The author's only intent was to call me names and say how bad the FBI is.
If the author was interested is discussing why he thought I should temper my enthusiasm, I would have left it there and responded. I actually started out editing the comment to remove the insults and innuendos I don't want my nieces and nephews to see 
and then typed a reply.
Then I stopped.
The author didn't leave a legitimate email address and used an anonymous proxy to hide his IP address. If he didn't want to be contacted about his views, I sure wasn't going to waste my time addressing them.
Anyway, in light of this experience, I thought it time to make it clear what my policy is regarding comments on this blog. So here it is and it's really simple.
Comments Allowed
- Comments that espouse my unfathomable wisdom
- Comments that add to the discussion.
- Comments that disagree with me - Please. Go for it. I am happy to have a spirited debate.
Comments Disallowed
- Anything I deem to be in poor taste or offensive. Yup. Anything, and I pick.
That's it in a nutshell. Please feel free to weigh in, just keep it civil
-Kevin
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Jeremiah Grossman just finds any of my comments offensive and has somebody at Google delete them for him because he’s that special.
There is a certain sense of honesty is allowing and keeping comments around, no matter how much in poor taste or offensive. What might be in poor taste to you could be another person’s information goldmine.
@Andre,
I can understand your perspective and frankly, I wrestled with leaving it or deleting it. I finally decided that I didn’t want my wife or Mother to be subjected to that level of bile.
However, in the interest of discussion, I do ask this question. What about spam? Those are comments too and I allow Akismet to take care of them for me automatically. Should I allow them too?
That’s about how much value the comment I deleted had. Actually, it had less, it didn’t even have a monetary purpose.
Anywho, you will find that I will lean towards minimal censorship. In fact, this was the first comment I have removed for the reasons stated above.
Thanks for the feedback!
-Kevin
Nice feedback about the FBI Citizens’ Academy. I hope to get selected one time in the future to participate as I am already in InfraGard and have been a few years now. I have had limited interaction with the FBI, and for the most part, they have been professional with me and they are seemingly open to the extent that they are allowed to when investigating cybercrimes. I think programs like InfraGard are great. There is substantial gang activity in my area, so I might look into the anti-gang initiatives you have mentioned.
@Mary,
If you aren’t already invovled yet, Infragard is another great organization. I would check to see if there is a chapter near you. (http://www.infragard.org)
-Kevin