A commenter's Bill of Rights? Let's think first

There's a fascinating discussion going on about the rights and prerogatives of bloggers and the people who leave comments on their Web sites.

Hank Williams has a good recap on his always entertaining blog of the incident which triggered a contretemps featuring--who else?--none other than Robert Scoble.

(Credit: CNET News.com)

This issue came to the fore recently when Robert Scoble commented on a post from Rob La Gesse's blog. The problem is that Scoble commented using Friendfeed instead of the standard blog comments. La Gesse and Scoble had a discussion where Scoble wanted him to move the discussion to Friendfeed. La Gesse did not want to do that, and at some point deleted his feeds from Friendfeed. This prevented the discussions about his blog from happening on Friendfeed. Unfortunately, as Mathew Ingram explains, this had the effect of deleting from public view Scoble's comments on LaGesse's blog. Scoble was upset that his comments had been deleted because he feels like he owns his comments.

That raised the logical question: Who owns your comments--the blog owner or you? Again, Williams:

What about when one comment will be viewed and under the control of more than one party, as in the case of Disqus. For example with Disqus you have the ability to edit your comments. And in some sense when you add a comment you are building a site for yourself (your collection of comments) and you are contributing to someone else's site.

Let me confess my bias right at the start. I'm with Matthew Ingram in that "something doesn't feel right" about all this. Once you press publish, that comment becomes part of the public record.

As you can imagine, there was little agreement about any of this. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson spotted an opportunity to promote one of the companies in the Union Square Ventures portfolio, pointing to the discussion of a "Bill of Rights" for commenters over at Disqus. But no matter. It is an interesting conversation--and Disqus offers up some interesting ideas, which deserve quotation in full. To wit:

a) The ability to edit and remove their comments

b) Access to all of their comments, even if it has been deleted on a blog

c) The right to use their own comments as blog posts. After all, a commenter is just a publisher not writing on his own website.

d) A life for the comment beyond a single blog. I want to take my comments with me, even if the blog shuts down. This may seem threatening to the publisher, but it really isn't. A commenter should have rights to what they post, but bloggers should still have control over content that appear on their blogs. Bloggers should still control: a) Whether or not someone is allowed to comment on his blog

b) The deletion of a comment

c) The modification of a comment, as long as the original copy is still accessible and the edit is transparent

The suggestions about ownership of a user's comments are worth further discussion. But I'd be less than candid not to acknowledge that the concept of revising or deleting comments after they go live really troubles me.

This isn't a face-off between "old media" and "new media" (though some surely will reach for that tired analogy.) This debate inadvertently hits a couple of important nerves--namely, the concept of objective truth and the risk of airbrushing history. I'm not clear what qualifies as a "transparent" edit. Cleaning up bad language? A deletion of a nasty word typed out in anger or frustration? A wholesale replacement of verbs and nouns? Or to take the most extreme example: "Comrade Trotsky doesn't exist."

The idea that you can modify or subtract a comment without impacting the conversation just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. A comment is part of a larger conversation; you tug any one thread and you affect everything which came before and after.

Just because we're writing and arguing online doesn't mean that the words are any less valuable. But there is a historical record to respect. Otherwise, we risk losing ourselves in a relativistic hodge-podge with no real start and no real ending. Just whatever strikes your fancy at that particular moment in time.

[noam sayne]

If a commenter wishes to retain the comment, it should be saved separately. It's pretty easy to do. I think the commenter should be able to do anything they wish with a comment, including post as an entry in a blog. Where I have my blog (Journalspace) I have yet to see anyone get upset over losing a comment made on another's blog, but I have seen and felt anguish over the loss of nearly all of our comments when Journalspace crashed some time ago.

If I want to delete an entry, it is my call if I want to save the comments or delete them.

[mdupris]

This does need thinking, and far more than has been printed here. The old sang "Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" comes to mind. I should have full rights to my blog, including rights to its total destruction. The alternative is others forcing me to maintain something -- apparently in perpetuity -- whether I want to or not. The close equivalent would be to force a newspaper to maintain its archives, and public access to them, forever just in case someone who wrote a letter to the editor (or presumably their heirs) wanted to look at it, even after the newspaper goes bust. This is not only burdensome but unnecessary in cyberspace. If you've made a comment you feel is worth keeping for posterity, keep it yourself (e.g a copy in your own blog) rather than depend on, much less require, someone to keep it for you.

[georgiarat]

Don't worry. Pretty soon Obama and the Demoncrats will force you to retain everything so the trial lawyers can make a few more billion. Add to that what Putin in doing to political humor in Russia and you can see where we will be in a few years. If you say anything about the government or the President you will be sued and no the Supreme Court will not help you.

[mrobzob]

So the first amendment must be a nuisance if it's your blog!
Eh?
I suppose that you would like George Bush to be President again.

[lkrupp]

"So the first amendment must be a nuisance if it's your blog!"

That's right and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Nothing.

[inachu]

Rights of the commentor should not be abused.

I do not like it if a comment was made and i do not have a choice to delete it after a few hours.
Also comments should not be deleted by nobody but the commentor himself.
If a comment is sad, off subject or just makes people angry so what. then let that sink in and let that person rethink his position.

"The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Click here to review our Terms of Use."
Nice way to get rid of FREEDOM OF SPEECH

[noam sayne]

Forum moderators have always had the power to delete comments that are off topic, abusive or obscene. As owner of the blog, I am the moderator. A commenter is free to post his or her thoughts on his or her own blog and complain about a deleted comment. Free speech is not harmed by a comment deletion.

[arackchk]

This is beyond ridiculous. Blogs belong to the people who run them, period. If someone doesn?t what someone else posts to THEIR blog, then they can delete it. I can?t believe this is even an issue.

[Logically_thought]

There is no right for a comment on your blog. Your are responsible for it and you own it. You can delete comments at your whim, or delete the site entirely. No commenter can make you keep up the post. It is there responsibility to keep copies of their own work. Scoble is an idiot and yes Robert, I would say it to your face. So your welcome to delete my comment.

[tenioman]

the commenter does not have any rights on someone elses blog. the blog owner can do anything he/she wants. The commenter can take his coment away, but the blog owner has no responsibility what so ever to publish, use , or keep a comment. Newspaper's don't have to publish every single letter to the editor that they see, only the best ones

[slhaynes]

The problem with commenters is that they think, including me, they have the ultimate truth. When in actuality, it's just an opinion. Blog owners have the right to delete anything they wish, including comments. Also, most commenters like to hide behind pseudo names. But not me.

Steve Haynes
Houston, TX

[ferricoxide]

It always strikes me as odd when people spout off about "freedom of speech" when it comes to topics such as this. Simply put: it doesn't apply. A blog is rarely a truly public forum. In the end, blogs and forums are typically run or owned by private parties. As such, "freedom of speech" is at the blog/forum owner's discretion.

[Imalittleteapot]

OK, this is probably already being done on one of those new fangled social networking sites I don't use, but my opinion is comments are kind of quasi throwaway data. As it gets old it loses importance, and I don't feel I have much right to the comments I put on someone else's page. However, if you want to make that big of deal about it one thing to do could be to use a slightly different form of comment system. One idea would be that instead of posting an actual comment, the poster just replies on their own blog, and what they actually post on the site is a permalink to their actual reply. The site could either allow the poster to type in a summary to the post, or if a standard was developed (some sort of microformat might work) simply stream the reply comment into the thread on the site they were replying to. Each site would have linkbacks to each other obviously. Think of all the extra attention CNET would get with all the extra links sprinkled over the web that point to CNET articles. I've seen a few people attempt this by simply pasting the link into the comment. There are a few problems with that method. Anyway, this way a website has control over what comments it shows, but the poster can still keep control of their own comments as well. Neither would have full control, but it is called cooperation. The comment isn't any good without the site, and the site isn't as good without the comments. However, now you need some sort of caching strategy plus the security nightmare it would be to stream in someone else's content to your site. Unfortunately it is things like spammers and hackers that make my whole post somewhat pointless. They seem to ruin everything. However, there could be other solutions, but perhaps it is one of those situations where you don't really understand why it is done the way it is until you try to do it a completely different way.

[jestead]

Anyone who claims that there is a First Amendment issue either hasn't read it, or doesn't understand plain English, or is misrepresenting what it says. Considering it's exactly one sentence long, even someone educated here can understand it.

[SteamChip]

>>So the first amendment must be a nuisance if it's your blog! Eh? I suppose that you would like George Bush to be President again.<<

I?m not sure how George Bush can help, if I vote for him again, does that mean I can delete old stuff off my blog, or does it mean I have to keep everything forever archived in case someone wants to look at it again?