The BBC recently launched a consolidated blog effort across the BCC aptly named The BBC Blog Network. While this is interesting in the whole “corporate blogging” discussion I noticed an even more interesting thing while perusing the FAQ. On the BBC Blog Network you have the possibility to complain about a specific comment thus the BBC encourage the readers to help them keep the comments sane, to the point and make sure that the comments follow the house rules.
I think it is an interesting way to keep the discussion flowing freely and to allow different discussions to evolve and thrive. Comments to some blogs might use different language (stronger, profanity etc.) which might be offensive to some but acceptable within certain areas. I think the complain functionality has the possibility of allowing this while protecting users of more general blogs from being offended.
They also ask comments to be short. Personally, I think it also depends on the proficiency with the language. I’m not sure, if in hindsight, pushing the longer ones to message boards is same as “Mark as Off-topic” – as deleting might offend the commenter. One off-topic post can trigger many though, when viewed as a whole, what’s being discussed might make sense with in the boundries of that discussion.
I hope, my comment is not off-topic 😉