I think by the fact that you comment on other people’s blogs and appear on blogroll’s and all now, there will be more people reading and commenting on your blog so I understand your need for some kind of policy.
Actually this is the first time I have ever encountered somebody who puts so much thought into their comment policy though. That’s really great of you!

So, IIRC legally the blog is yours and you have the right and even the duty (to some extent) to delete problematic comments. Putting a comment policy online for people to be aware of is quite nice, I think.

I’ve always assumed that this sort of policy being in place would be assumed knowledge, but I guess haven’t having the ‘privilege’ of receiving a comment of of extreme offensiveness, I’ve yet to consider what I’d do then - the most I’ve had to do is edit double comments to clean up clutter and fix (my own) spelling errors -_-”
It’s nice to see a clear cut policy being published though. Responsible blogging 4tw? :P

Nice. As for me, I usually let pretty much anything slide, unless they’re blatant spam, which so far I’ve only deleted twice P:

Perhaps you could consider adding the comment editting plugin as well?

@Sasa: Thanks! ^_^ To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure whether it should be expanded or not but I hope this will give me something more to refer to when these things arise. I am all for free speech but I’m also from the “get off my damn lawn” school too.

@issa-sa: I had too…but as more and more stuff comes online, it seems that we have to cover our back a lot more.

@Shin: I might…I haven’t seen a lot of need for it yet though. Perhaps I have articulate readers?

Hmm. I guess I’m in rather a similar situation to you, in that I have no commenting policy at the moment.
Then again, you are miles ahead of me, as you actually write posts and get people commenting. I write the odd post every month (or in recent history, every three to four months…) which generally means that few people bother coming back. Let alone commenting. :P

As for the balance you have come up with - I think it is really good. Gives more than enough room for people to respond to your posts, but allows you to keep it to content that is expected by viewers of your site. In short - I likes!

My one thought would be to stick it in a little div just below “Leave a reply”. ^^ That way people will read it (or, you give them the best possible chance to.) A little annoying perhaps to read it every time but there are ways to cut down on that (easiest is to open registrations, and then not show it to registered users. Out of curiosity, why have you disabled registration?)

@Philip P.: Yes, you should write more posts instead of spending all your time panicking over the ezine. :P

I will probably place some kind of small statement under the Leave a Reply header, something like, “All comments are initially held for moderation. Any inappropriate comments will be subject to removal. Please read the comment policy for further information.”

I never had registration enabled because I hate having to keep track of another password on blogs I read. There are several in my reader that I absolutely love but require registration on all comments…bugs the crap out of me. Is there really any benefit to registering other than reducing the chance that there will be 2 Philip P.s?

Haha. XD I know.
(Right now I’m trying to get the forums up after Zian wiped half the admin section. >.< The fun never ends! Been working on my new blog design tonight though. Just having some issues with divs. Try and move the logo down with div spacing, and the entire WEBSITE moves down. And this is with Firefox! Strangely enough, IE7 works - just the logo moves down. Not sure if that is because my CSS is really that bad, or what. But it’s strange…)

Well - you can set it so that registration is an option, but not a requirement to posting a comment. Under Membership in the WordPress general settings there are two check boxes: Anyone can register, and Users must be registered and logged in to comment.
If you just have the first one selected, that allows you to have users register to remove things like the comments rules notice (maybe show it again at time of registration?) and some other things like keeping a basic commenter profile.
However, those users who don’t want to register can just go ahead and post their comments. I think it’s a happy little median.

I don’t care if people flame me on my blog, really, and even if the comment is like, mean, I still leave it in order to come up with a good come-back and throw words right back at them :P

Usually, spam don’t pass my spam detector on my blog and comments with more than a certain number of links have to be moderated by me. I especially set this moderation rule because I learn from RIUVA that there are users who post links to either “virus sites” or “buy this and get 1 xxx free” sites.

I’ll usually close an eye to troll comments since they’re just trolls but once they touch on “sensitive issues”, I’ll probably step in to delete those since the country that I’m living in slap fines and jail charges at bloggers for racism remarks. I won’t want to get into trouble because of those remarks.

@Philip P.: I see what you mean. It’s something to think about though. I’m just not sure how many people would sign up or if this would open up vulnerabilities.

@blissmo: Unfortunately, I lack the time to start mudslinging with faceless people.

@Hynavian: That’s an interesting law. I can see how remarks like that could be problematic, even without fines. I suspect it might also be alienating to new viewers too.

The only time I’ve mentioned about a commenting policy of some sort is in this one post where the commenting was getting out of hand… people were using the blog as some manga request forum / private messaging :roll:

Other than that, I allow trolls to do their trolling, so long as they don’t touch on really sensitive issues (I haven’t encountered such a comment, so far).

@usagijen: Good point on the requests/PM thing. I haven’t had comments become like that but I certainly don’t wish for people to be trading torrents here. I will have to add something for that.

Interesting! I haven’t had to edit very many comments except for formatting (like if someone puts in a really long url in the post), but I will delete comments that I consider without merit.

No Good: “Kabitzin, you suck.”
Passes: “Kabitzin, you suck because you haven’t written about how awesome Code Geass is.”

I don’t have a thin skin, but I prefer to have comments that further discussion instead of just having insults. I also *-out-a-letter censor curses on occasion, just to keep it work-safe for everyone.

@Kabitzin: Cursing…I’m not sure where to stand on that one. Do work filters catch cursing and such and ban subsequent websites? I suppose for the integrity of the blog to be maintained, it would have to be a reflection of me…I very rarely curse at all and don’t usually include it (if ever) in my comments on other blogs. Something more to think about….