Wriging

For me it generally depends on how bad the errors are. If I see a misspelling or grammatical error that totally changes what I know the author was trying to say then I will make a change, but usually they inform me or make another comment fixing their own error. If it is someone who just doesn't want to take the time to check what they write and continuously make mistakes or is simply juvenile I don't bother fixing it at all.

I'm not here to make them look more intelligent since they aren't trying to do that on their own.

I'm thinking about it more along the lines of it is my blog and I don't like having comments that don't have capitalisation after full-stops. Especially when it is one of only two or three comments on a post.

Do you think the commenter would be annoyed if I did fix up these errors? I have to admit though that these comments are usually made by people who find my website through a search engine and not return visitors.

I don't see why someone would be upset about it unless there is a purpose behind why they wouldn't capitalize letters. It is your blog so do what you want with it and sense you do seem to be against censoring and changing the context of the comments I really don't see a problem with what you are intending to do. But maybe I'm just liberal like that.

If it's a silly typo or a typical mistake, I often correct it. A lot of times, I know the commenters and I know they actually appreciate that.

But I would never change people's 'style' and in that context, changing grammar already becomes tricky.

I don't change flawed English if it's part of who they are (e.g. non-native speakers). I don't change if someone chooses to write in lowercase consistently or not use apostrophes (cant, wont, dont). And I don't change when I'm not entirely sure myself!

So, Canberraboy, I would be careful - as much as I hate lax and careless typing. People like to be appreciated for their input, not stand corrected for making a typo. If you get to know your commenters, you will discover what makes them tick and you could even ask them if it's okay.

It may be your blog, but it's their comment. If you interfere too much, you might soon find yourself without comments at all.

Scrivs said: "It is your blog so do what you want with it"

I think that's the key point right there. It is your blog/house, you want things to be neat and presentable. I have never needed to edit someones comment yet, but if I know what the person meant to type I would have no problem fixing it. Now me, I am a terrible speller, I am so glad that firefox 2.0 came around w/ spell check.

Scrivs said: "It is your blog so do what you want with it"

That may be, but to play devil's advocate, technically, unless your comment form arranges otherwise, their comments are under their copyright and changing them is creating a derivative work.

This note caught my eye because I was actually planning on changing my comment form in my redesign to actually put notice that submitted comments become Creative Commons licensed (like the rest of my content).

Well, wouldn't it fall under, "all content is copyright" when you say all doesn't that mean all?

I'm not anywhere near as anal about comments as some of you seem to be. If someone makes a spelling error they can make another comment correcting it or not. The only time I edit a comment is if someone incorrectly codes a link and it breaks tables and messes up my format. Othe than that, why bother?

It depends on the context of the comment for me.

First, I don't care how pissed someone is, I have a blog wide policy against the F-Bomb and I will delete it.

Second, if you're making a point about education and you can't spell, you bet your butt I will leave your spelling errors in tact as they help clarify your expertise.

Other than that I'll correct glaring errors when I see them.

@shadeofgray: The notice you put on the bottom of the page actually has very little standing in court. For instance, if I have a "All content ©2006 J Wynia" notice on my site and put up an MP3 of some new hit song, I don't somehow get copyright ownership of the music.

By US and most international law, as soon as the expression of an idea is written down, painted, sculpted, etc. it is under copyright protection by the person who created it. No further action is required.

If you are not the creator of a bit of content, in order to make a legal claim on it, you actually would need to be able to prove a "chain of permission" on paper or written somewhere where the original creator gave you explicit permission to use the content.

That means that when I type this note, I have copyright on it by default. If there were a note or a checkbox next to the submit button that said "By submitting this note, you grant 9rules license to use the note under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License" and log the status of the checkbox (which is my intent on my design), you have the explicit permission.

Absent that, normal copyright applies and the commenter owns the comment.

Incidentally, you'll note the bottom of this page, which reflects that reality in the copyright statement.

I generally don't believe in editing comments. I like to keep a record of exactly how someone says something — there's a lot that can be read into a person's mistakes. The only thing I'll fix is a broken link, or an improperly coded html value (such as a hyphen instead of an em-dash).

I don't really have a problem with editing things. If I felt I needed to edit something then I would, without regret or hesitation.

I should say that I rarely edit anything. If I'm going to edit something, it will only be a serious typo, ridiculous flamebait or spam.

Along the lines of the copyright stuff, if you're taking copyright away from your users (as I do), you're taking on the responsibility for the content too.

If something is legally (or maybe even just morally) shifty, I won't stop to think about editing it out.

My blog is my baby. I won't let people screw around with it.

When I read this I couldn't help but write about it. I have never edited a comment unless asked to. If I want to fix a link I comment: here's the right link. On 9rules someone posted a note that did not format properly (he didn't strip the custom CSS for his site) so I did that but I didn't touch any of his words.

And I can't honestly understand why anyone would want to do that. I really can't - even if there weren't legal issues involved with it.

I've fixed obvious spelling errors before but I leave it at that. And usually its for regular commenters.

well, i personally do not like to edit anything unless it is really serious. To me, i do not even have the confidence that my spellings are good (hell, i always get names wrong) so I generally ignore the typos as long as I understand what's wrong.

I am not very particular about spelling mistakes since the target audience for my blog are not graduate-level studies (most possibly) but teenagers who are interested in anime. Hence, grammar is probably not their strength. Other genres of blogging might have different positions on this, especially technology (stereotype).

I don't get all that many comments, however, if I do see some spelling errors or lack of punctuation which makes it unreadable, I will change things. It's a personal blog and nothing "serious" is ever in the comments.

As others have said - if it's your blog, do what you want with it.

look at it this way.

if you're going to fix something, do you have a policy about it?

do you 'fix' comments by regular readers and leave the others untouched?

i think it's how you see yourself.
are you primarily a content creator?
a discussion facilitator?
a proof reader/copy editor?

i think the net should be uncensored.

i guess if i were against strong language, i'd put up a comments policy and enforce it.

else everything runs fair and free on my blog (cept for the spam comments and the viagra ads....i keep those to myself!)

This discussion somewhat surprises me. I've never once considered touching anyone's comment. I've been asked to delete one and that's certainly not an issue. I'd feel weird editing someone else's stuff...

Devin, I'm with you. The thought has never crossed my mind. Someone else's comment doesn't reflect on me but directly on the person who wrote it. Let's take SitePoint, a well-established geeky community. I see spelling errors, people not punctuating properly, etc. Does anyone thing back of SitePoint because their members didn't comment perfectly? Do the owners of SitePoint feel the need to correct their members?

I should be reading Dante now...

If i was a webmaster, I would only edit someone's comment if they were violating the rules, such as spamming or something like that.

Hasn't this thread derailed a bit? I mean, it's not a problem, since it's nice to see a conversation opening up, but all this talk about censorship and copyright... I don't know.

Canberraboy did write: "I'm not talking about censoring comments or deleting entire chunks of a comment."

Just now, someone wrote a lovely comment that had went like this: "...but I find if boring..." Not five minutes earlier, I'd made exactly the same typo: missing the t and hitting the f and not noticing. I emended that 'if' to 'it' and I think the author, whom I know well by now, will be happy for that...

If someone writes a letter to the Times, the editors will emend (and even abridge) their letters as well. To me that is sound editorial practice. Remember, we're as much in the publishing business as any newspaper is.

So, again, I emend comments and I see no problem with it. Reading over the comments here again, I'm happy to see that most people, at least, agree.

Well let's see, if I ask a question: "Should I do this?" and it might get me into legal trouble, I sure hope someone would mention it to me. And if I posed such a question, I would definitely like to know other people's opinions because there might be things I'm missing and have not considered.

Once armed with the information, a decision is made. Stick to it, but if it backfires, don't whine. Don't complain. Don't try to get out of it because it's not a mistake, it's an informed decision.

Napfisk the difference between the NYT and the average blogger - when you send a letter to the NYT:

1) You have to identify yourself.
2) You are notified the letter will be put in the paper.
3) They have a legal department for such things.
4) They provide tips on how to get published.

Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges because we all know, if a blogger were to get a lawsuit regarding comments the very first thing they would do to try to get out of it is to say "the comment doesn't belong to me". but if the blogger has a history of editing, that's not going to fly in a court of law. Believe it or not there are sue-happy people who look for people to sue because they know they left themselves open for it.

It's more the "how to go about it" (getting "better" comments) that's the issue. Perhaps I'll write about that because I see your point (comment editors) - it's just that legally, it's not a smart thing to do.

Oh, but I do appreciate the opinions shared here. They've been very interesting and informative.

I don't know, maybe I'm naive, but it's just that all this legal talk 1) is a bit over my head, and 2) feels as if it doesn't apply to me.

I write pretty mainstream stuff about books and art and funny things I experienced. Law suits... it's just something that never occurred to me.

In Europe we have this stereotypical view of the US as being a bit 'law suit crazy' (I suppose there is some truth in that, no?). We seem to be a lot more casual about that stuff, perhaps to our own disadvantage, who knows.

But I'm still going to get rid of ugly typos in my comments :-D

Thanks for the discussions.
– Nils

it's just that legally, [editing comments is] not a smart thing to do.

Well I think that's a little naive. If someone were taken to court over a comment on their blog the prosecution would definately know that you can edit your user-given content.

Maintaining a website that stays within the realm of the law (regardless of who posts the content) is the only way to maintain one legally. Your argument would allow people to setup and use a blog with their own legal content on but all the user-comments are full of child porn, warez, etc.

I know I'm taking it a long way there but it's the truth. In most people's eyes something fairly personal like a blog reflects upon you. If I go to a blog with 5 comments underneath each post written in 1337speak or with no punctuation, I'd be tempted to feel that that was the intended audience.

To use another practically irrelevant example, if you go to a bar and it's full of a pretty rough crowd night in, night out, you'd be tempted to feel that's what's encouraged there and move on (unless that's your scene).

Every part of your blog reflects back upon itself, including comments.

That said, I don't feel it's right to change the tone of someone's post. If you're going to edit typo's/whatever because there's no built-in means for the user to do that themselves, go ahead. I'm sure they won't mind. If the post is flaimbait/illegal scum, just delete the whole thing.

Oli: show me legal documentation to back up your words, otherwise it's not fact, it's opinion.

See, I did some research but I already know this from having a large gaming community and seeking legal advice (I'm in the US btw). When I make a comment anywhere I give an implied right to display my comment as I left it. Period.

Oli, basically what you're saying is your comment reflects back on 9rules. It doesn't. It reflects back directly on you. But like I said in my article, Wikipedia sums it up best:

Don’t edit others’ comments: Refrain from editing others’ comments without their permission (with the exception of prohibited material such as libel and personal details). It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Never edit someone’s words to change their meaning.

And another note: Oli is in the UK. I'm talking about US law. The original poster is in Australia so I strongly suggest seeking legal counsel before editing anyone's words without their permission.

You've read or taken several things out of context there, Tyme. Let me clarify what I was saying because there's quite some difference in what you've just said and what I'm saying as they don't really overlap.

basically what you're saying is your comment reflects back on 9rules.

No. 9rules is not a personal blog. People don't come here to read about one person and therefore expect a community discussion in the forum-style Notes section. Just as the blog section is known to be part of an organisation. It is expected (by anyone that's spent five minutes here) to be diverse.

I didn't use the word "personal" in my previous note reply to define "blog" but I meant it =) That's still how I see the majority of blogs.

I believe in small communities or individual (ie personal) blogs, your audience does reflect significantly upon you... Especially because, in a way, as bloggers, we perform for our own communities. We interact with them and to an outsider, that may make us look more like them, especially if we condone illegal (or just seriously immoral) content... Leading me onto my second rebuke...

The original poster is in Australia so I strongly suggest seeking legal counsel before editing anyone's words without their permission.

It's a large chunk to highlight but the whole essence of your reply here and your blog post is about your rights to edit the tone/content of your users' comments. Whereas I did mention that (and say I was pretty opposed to it) I am, in fact, talking about something you just quoted:

(with the exception of prohibited material such as libel and personal details)

Now I do agree that there are different legislations around the world about what you can have up on a web page but as the owner of the site, you are liable for all the content under your server's local laws and you have to at least show you do your best, in the eyes of the law, to prevent that content being available through you.

Now, after some reading around to furnish you with proof, I have to suck it up... Albeit only a little bit:

- It turns out in the US, your users can libel anyone and you're not responsible for it, they are. That is civil law and I can't find anything (reading through section laws -- migraine express) to say who's liable for criminal infringements.

- Go to Germany, and the moderators are fully liable. Fun!

- Just a few weeks ago, an Australian court held a search engine responsible for indexed links to MP3s! That one took me by surprise.

Getting things down directly to users posting illegal things in comments, is really quite hard! It doesn't look like there's any case-law on the subject but if you look at related things like people doing things illegally on your WI-FI, and you are in a position to detect it, you're aiding and abetting in a crime. As an owner of a blog you would have a very tough time proving that you didn't know these comments were coming in and therefore have an even tougher time coming up with an excuse as to why you're letting illegal activity happen on your watch.

How much control/monitoring you have over the thing that "criminals" might use with/without your knowledge directly affects how guilty you are legally or morally.

So with all that out, you should probably amend your code of ethics to reflect the legal status of a comment... Even if a court deems you non-liable for the content, they can and will force you to remove it.

It's saying I don't have permission to edit my own Note now... Sigh... I was going to add that in that Oz case, the ISP hosting the search engine was also held liable for the content (which were only links to another site).

Australia is scary!

Not Too Geeky is my personal blog. I do not for one minute think that what strangers say reflects on me. Neither does my audience, but to be sure, I will start a discussion. They DID however say they hate comment editing.

You have yet to show me where a blogger would not liable if they edited a comment. If there is a libelous comment, remove it, don't edit it. That's my entire point.

For me, I'm not editing anything. It either stays or it goes. Period. But again you have morphed this beyond what the conversation was really about:

"Is it generally acceptable to add punctuation, fix spelling, add tags to abbreviations. "

The answer is no, it's not, as you can see from Wikipedia and even the comments on my site, people don't like their comments edited but they would like the ability to edit their comment themselves. I said by having a history of editing comments, that could leave a blogger open in the event of a lawsuit. As mentioned on my site, a blogger was sued and taken advantage of because it was known they edited comments.

Let's get this topic back on track.

You have yet to show me where a blogger would not liable if they edited a comment.

Anywhere that assumes ownership/copyright of user content would not be liable in a user-vs-blog case because the user has forgone their rights to that content. But as you said on your blog, some people are just sue-happy. You cannot win with some people unless you fight them.

Something else that I've noticed while reading around your blog, Tyme: your audience is blessed with perfect spelling and grammar =) I didn't notice a mistake over 50-odd comments... But that may just be tired eyes.

What would you do if every other comment was actually difficult to read through typos, broken engrish and whatnot?

The problem with letting people self-administrate their content is twofold: firstly you need a user-authentication system to give ownership of posts to a user (rather than anonymous) which turns people off and secondly you need certain controls to stop people abusing the system (as was aired when the edit feature was introduced here). Neither of these are insurmountable but they're added considerations vs just cleaning up after people.

Would you like to know why I don't have that problem Oli? Because people are comfortable posting on my site. They aren't nervous, they realize I don't have this super high expectation. They know they can kick back, relax and talk to me.

You can't see it now because I couldn't get the comments out but normally comments on NTG soared at 50+ per entry. I broke my blog for my thesis (project) so it doesn't have the traffic it used to. ScrivsTyme had to move to forums to handle the comments. I'm used to what you are talking about.

I went to your site, looked at the first entry that had a comment, I see what you mean. And I found others. This is what I would do - and I would NOT edit them.

1) Fix the grammar on your comment box:

We do not spam. We hate it as much as you do. We wont show it on the site. We just need it to contact you back, when needed.

2) Put a discreet reminder above the comment box to check grammar before posting.
3) You don't seem to interact with your readers. Respond to the comment, start a conversation. When you join the conversation it encourages people to stop being lurkers and join the conversation. You'll be more likely to draw your niche crowd.
4) You have their email address. If you see repeat behavior, gently remind them of proper grammar so their comment is easier to read.
5) There are other things with your site that could be improved that would help draw the type of reader you are looking for. For example: you use the word "anonymous" if people don't want to login. Anonymous triggers a "I can do what I want with no penalties" thought. I asked a couple of friends what they thought when they saw anonymous comments and that is the first thing that came to mind. I can misbehave and I won't get into trouble. Try re-naming it something else.

You'd be surprised how little changes can make a big difference overall.

Fix the grammar on your comment box:

I do try and reply to comments when they warrant it. A lot of them recently have been very short little one-liners but some of my articles have pulled in good conversation... 159 comments in this one (you'll need JS enabled to scroll the comments until I can figure out a decent enough URL system without breaking current permalinks).

I think something that I should do more often for gaining better comments is stop answering my own damned questions by ranting on for 3000 words and let the readers chip in. Over the last month or so I've gotten into quite a rant-stop where I'll start and end a topic in one post.

Being self-critical is fun!

As for your point five... That's an interesting one that warrants some IRC-based testing to see what people are most comfortable/confident being classed as =) Thank you so much (again) for your feedback on my individual site -- I am pushing your suggestions through as and when I can!

Just to finish my rant on editing of comments: Sometimes, especially in that Kittenauth (159 comment marathon), there were lots of people from all around the world with varying levels of English replying. The content of all (99%) the replies was great but some of them were only borderline understandable.

I didn't edit things to be cruel, change their meaning (at least I hope I didn't!) or single them out in any way, just make sure their contribution was noticed and understood by other people. It wasn't even like I was doing full rewrites, just putting in the right punctuation/spelling/etc.

But as a rule for all site-owners, I don't think you should have to conform to "leaving everything as is" or being a "grammar nazi". Do what makes you feel comfortable but just make sure your users know the policy. Just remember that the more you want to be able to moderate, the more some people will resent risking being edited.

Personally, I'd never like to lock myself in a "I'm never going to edit a comment" because, chances are that one day there'll be a comment and I'll be really stuck between nuking it completely or leaving it up. I'd always rather salvage okay content from an otherwise bad reply but still maintain the link to the author -- I don't want to steal the credit.

Tyme, those are great suggestions!

To add my two cents into the mix, there's something good to be said for not editing your comments in that I can say (from personal experience) that I've had some decent search engine traffic from commonly mis-spelled words that people have written in the comments of a popular article.

So the article is my responsibility to get correct (both grammatically and in terms of spelling) but the comments I leave alone because I've seen some friendly, natural search engine traffic through mis-spellings.

An odd thing to smile at but hey.

I (original poster of this thread) am going to have to clarify that firstly:

The fact that legal issues were brought up is insane, this was about adding the tag to abbreviations like LMOA and also about capitalisation and the placement of full stops etc. Not about editing what the user is trying to say;

Secondly, I don't edit my comments, I have made one edit to one comment and it was changing a sentence that ended in six exclaimation marks, which I changed so that it would end it one.

If you want to sue me for that good luck, I'm sure you'll get a lot of money out of me for the emotional trauma it caused you when I deleted a couple of exclaimation marks out of your comment.

Lol. Exactly!

"The fact that legal issues were brought up is insane, this was about adding the tag to abbreviations like LMOA and also about capitalisation and the placement of full stops etc. Not about editing what the user is trying to say;"

That is ridiculous. Again, find me a law to back it up because every one I found said: if you touch it, you take partial responsibility. Period.

Actually it was brought up on my site how someone who thought they wouldn't have any problems was sued. And lost. Over nothing. To each his own but again if it happens, don't whine, don't cry, and it's not a mistake because the warning is here just ignored.

* goes and put's the exclaimation marks back in fear

Not that I'm second guessing Andy's (from your blog) sources but the evidence was pretty anecdotal in that he said:

Wasn’t there a blogger who was sued and ended up taking their blog down because he/she was sued for editing comments? Someone said they were changing the comments and sued for discrimination or something like that, on a personal blog.

The "or something like that" tickles me considering how into "show me your proof of a law" etc we're getting in this thread.

Furthermore, what what I can read from his comment, that's got nothing to do with the content of the comment; more who has ownership and rights over the content inside. If you're going to edit something that is libellous/criminal and you leave in that part, sure you're liable for it's content. If I'm going off at another tangent, it's because I misunderstood "you take partial responsibility".

I think I said this before, but this is a really murky topic. There really is no solid case-law which accommodates for these specific blogging/comment scenarios yet which any of us can use to say who's in the right or wrong but as Tyme said, if you do it: know you're liable for the content and know you may lose face with readers.

I still don't think it's a morally wrong thing to do if you're just cleaning up for people so other people can understand it. Lots of you do. Each to our own =)

Great confirmation, such affirmative language "Wasn't there", "Or Something", "he/she", "Someone said".

The commenter has all of the facts there... I am 100% sure he studied law.

Of course I can be vague on someone else's case because I got legal advice from an attorney.

Oh, and for those that don't think people purposely make errors to see if it will be corrected: BBC - first comment. Person left an error in the comment on purpose. Happens all the time, seriously, but they learned their lesson because they didn'tdidn't edit any grammar in this baby.

My goal is for the person who might be contemplating this to be able to make an informed decision not "he thinks it's ok, it's on 9rules, so it must be ok".

Fact: there are perception issues regarding this
Fact: it tends to piss people off which is why large social networks don't do it
Fact: there are legal issues involved depending on where you are
Fact: seek legal advice, get some sort of policy. Don't just implement one and think it's ok.

"The commenter has all of the facts there... I am 100% sure he studied law."

I hope you weren't referring to me, but I'm not male.

I was referring to the comment by Andy Dawson on your website. Let me put it this way how much do you want? If you left a comment on my website asking a question and didn't add a question mark, how much would you sue me for if I did?

Is it worth $10,000 or $20,000? I mean hypothetically I added a fucking question mark to your comment! I believe it is easier to read if comments are cleaned up.

Would you buy a book if it didn't have punctuation? I sure as hell wouldn't.

We can go back and for on this all day but the fact remains: what you think and what the law is are completely different. In the US people are sue happy. Our courts are clogged with meaningless lawsuits and many get default judgments because someone "thinks" nothing will happen or that it's ridiculous and dismiss it. The law is the law.

When you edit comments you assuming ownership of them, period. Not just the ones you edited, all of them - you can't have it both ways. That is the law. Politely editing comments today can get you a lawsuit in the future, like someone posting false information and you were completely unaware it was false. That happens daily - companies sue bloggers all the time. The "comment belongs to the commenter" defense that all the smart people who don't edit comments can take will be lost to you. Slam dunk, easy to win lawsuit for the company and the average blogger doesn't have the funds to defend themselves.

A blogger can be smart and respect the laws and protect his/herself or they can follow your route and put what they think over reality (the law). Bloggers are sued all the time, it's a part of blogging. The smart ones protected themselves.