ward3brighton.ca

While managing some of the thousands of comment spams that bombard this website, I inadvertently deleted some legitimate comments that were made on some recent posts. The anti-spam routine that normally identifies and sequesters machine-generated comments (mostly ads for prescription drugs) allowed a few illegitimate comments through, and when I was deleting them I accidentally deleted some real reader comments and even a couple of my own. I was able to recover most — if not all — the ones I trashed, but I’m not sure I got them all. So, if you happen to notice a comment you made on this website has mysteriously disappeared, it was not intentional. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.

On this same topic, I’ve been meaning to mention The Guardian, and specifically their comment policy. It was a great move when they started allowing readers to comment on stories online; it’s an excellent way to gauge the public’s reaction to an issue and engage readers. But something that has always bothered me is their seemingly random and vaguely defined criteria for deleting comments. The comments are not always insightful nor necessarily coherent, but it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to read through them (even if they are criticising me and my fellow councillors). Quite often you will notice a reference by one commenter to another comment that obviously no longer exists. Otherwise, when the Guardian moderators delete a comment there is no way to know, and no explanation is given. It would be helpful if when a comment is removed it does not simply disappear into a black hole, but rather gets replaced by an explanation, such as “Comment #14 removed for excessive profanity and potentially libelous statements”, or whatever. There’s something that makes me uneasy about The Guardian’s comments feature because you have no way of knowing how many comments are deemed inappropriate and deleted, or why.

You’re welcome to comment here with as much libelous profanity as you please… to a certain extent.