You wouldn’t believe the amount of negative and outright threatening comments I hear every day I work my day job.

Great advice, especially as I have had the odd bad comment recently. (Mainly from competitors).

I think the main thing is not to get wound up be negative comments and agree that you must seem courteous and greatful for comments (as good or bad comments attract more readers!)

Besides most seasoned bloggers appreciate that we are all human and mistakes happen, with the pressure we are all under keeping our own blogs, guest blogs, diggs, technorati, wikis and facebook up to date. Let alone keeping the day job going!

Here’s my recent bad blog experience and how I delt with it…. http://www.connectingbristol.org/2007/07/05/who-is-the-biggest-social-networking-site-of-them-all-in-bristol/#comments

I personally have been riled up several times by comments people have left. The most painful was a person accusing me of using an anti-semetic picture, which was absurd. My instinct was to attack back. I recall being upset all day about it. Ever since then I’ve been making a concerted effort not to let the haters get to me.

I am convinced, though, there are a select few of people who just live to write a crummy comment. But then, there are jerks in real time as well.

Anyway, I’ll be printing this out & tacking it up in front of my computer.

So now my rules will be:
a)No drunk blogging
b)Ignore the a-hole commenters.
c)TBA

And I learned to love feed back — all of it. If you learn to relish the negative ones, and be prepared to defend your points in a legitimate and constructive way, you’ll find that the conversation that ensues is often more worthwhile than the original post.

Cheers
t

I was raised to believe you attract more bees with honey, but I’ve since learned that a lot of vinegar attracts bugs and low life creatures from everywhere. As much as the honey does. :D

The first time I had an article make it to the front page of digg I was actually a bit nervous to read the comments (on digg itself). I was shocked to find them all positive. So the second time I was on the digg front page I jumped right into the comments prepared for some more love. Instead I found myself being called every bad name in the book :)

For those of you who have trouble developing thick skin (or just don’t want to) – create a text file or print out some of the really positive feedback that you get. Keep it nearby and give it a read any time someone calls you a moron.

Sandra that is a pretty funny paragraph!

Joe, not allowing comments is a strategy I have considered, however I still get many more constructive comments than negative. And then 98% spam comments but that is another story altogether. I feel that as long as the majority of comments are constructive there is a reason to continue with them. However I haven’t hit the level of traffic where moderation or negativity is a chore.

Thanks for commenting!

The above material has been thoughtfully considered, astutely worded and meticulously edited and states clearly and concisely all pertinent information. Should there be any difficulty in clearly understanding any part of this message, its intent or its purpose, then there is every reason to believe that you are a blithering idiot.

Negative comments can be handled so many ways, and a lot of people ignore them. I take every comment I get with grace.

I had a user that kept coming back, always making rude comments, and a lot of times, having nothing to do with a blog post at all. I thought about banning him or deleting his posts, but I kept them up.

People would comment along after him and then there would be conflicts, but I tried to calm people down, he’s only expressing his opinion after all. Eventually, he just stopped. I guess he realized that his comments didn’t really mean anything if he had nothing constructive to say. If he had a suggestion, I would listen.

I think that it just all depends on the types of negative comments you get. Great tips.