I love reading blogs and making comments

And reading the comments others leave. I hate rude uncaring comments and of course I hate spam. But what is worst than rude and spam?

Commenters who are judgmental are the worst. What gives them the right to judge others. Many of the commenters who leave judgmental comments are cowards. They are like drive by shooters afraid to be seen or to confront. They are the type of people who will shoot you in the back. They do not have the courage or knowledge to defend their statements or beliefs.

That said, I too have left judgmental comments. I've done it in the guise of helping, by leaving comments telling the writer of the blog what they should do. There is a fine line between constructive criticism and being judgmental. And I probably have cross that line on a few comments. Why do we cross the line? By being too strong in our convictions and being too sure we understand what is going on in the life of others.

Some blog writers have thick skin and don't care what comments are left. Others we hurt with judgmental comments.

So how as bloggers do we protect our self from bad comments? The easiest way is to turn off comments. To me this is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. Several blogs that I like to read the posting and the comments have turned off comments. So sad. You lose the interaction with your blogger friends. Another way is to not allow anonymous comments. This is not foolproof but it seems to reduce the number of bad comments. Yet another way is to require logon to access the blog or even hide the blog. Both of these methods reduce the interaction with other bloggers.

Its a good idea to learn how to delete a comments on your blog. I just got an off topic comment so I just deleted it. Poof its gone. Not had any spam yet so I guess for now I will just delete any that gets posted.

So how do you handle bad comments? Any tricks for the rest of us?