Yaro, I just wanted to say that I support the action you took. Perhaps you should have provided better notice, but its great that you have the guys to publicly acknowledge your mistake.

Making reckless comments about someone’s business practices is not ‘internet censorship’. In the democratic world it’s called libel. Libel is a very serious business in Australia, and if youre posting on an Aussie blog, you better be aware of it. Under our law, it won’t be Yaro that ends up in court if the owner objects. If you guys are going to pretend to be ‘grownups’, start acting like it.

It seems that Duncan has changed his tune about the product in question on his own blog. Bit late now that all that mud’s been thrown though..

Also seems that he’s hardly a white knight in this arena if these comments are accurate… (I personally don’t care enough to check, but feel free if you do)

http://www.afreedomainhost.com/adsense-duplicate-content-joel-comm

Cheers
Hugh

As for my stance regarding the original free ebook article, you can see I’ve added content to clarify my intent regarding the article.

…That sounds a little contradictory to me.

To erase comments because you don’t like the tone of them, to me that’s internet censorship. Duncan, myself and others had brought up legitimate facts about the nature of Joel Comm’s eBooks are not a direct insult to Mr. Comm himself; just the nature of what he is promoting. But obviously it’s your blog and you call the shots.

I’d be more worried if people stopped paying attention at all.

Regardless – my point 5 doesn’t change – I still think comments help with traffic (no doubt the issues around me deleting comments will end up increasing my traffic because of the “storm” created as a result).

I appreciate your two cents and I encourage, through the wonders of commenting, any other people to have their say as well.

“Some will not like this policy but since I control this publication, I make the rules. If you don’t like them, don’t leave comments and don’t read my blogs.”

Which is odd because your “Number 5 rule of blogging” is

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

I would fear that your recent outburst smacks of “toys out of the pram” (at least from this innocent bystander’s view) and will serve to damage your credibility. I would consider toning down your policy, hushing down your policy or biting the bullet and letting an interesting comment debate begin. If something is SERIOUSLY out of kilter in a comment (or is spam), then quietly dispose of it and refer them to your Ts and Cs.

Just my 2Pence worth

I’ll repost the comment I made on Duncan’s blog article for all to see -

******

Hi Duncan,

I can see based on the comments and everything that I’ve probably lost any chance of repairing our relationship, which is a shame.

For what it’s worth I would like to apologise for not emailing you immediately after deleting your comment on my blog. I should have given you that courtesy.

Besides that I don’t really appreciate the public bashing but I’m sure you feel it justified since I deleted your comment and it’s the way you like to express yourself.

Lesson learnt for me.

Regarding the post I made about the AdSense ebook which referenced the templates – I don’t intend to take it down because I don’t have a problem with website templates. I can see where you are coming from and I’m comfortable enough to agree to disagree in this instance, although you probably aren’t.

Why I deleted your comment from my blog was that you posted comments about the integrity of Joel Comm. My post was intended to recommend a free ebook which I had I read and wanted to recommend to my readers, which to get they had to sign up to a prelaunch email list for the template product which is to be released in July. I didn’t want a comment that alleged something about Joel without providing some evidence (a single link would have been enough) to back it up.

Where I went wrong was to delete the comments without waiting long enough for you to comment again with evidence (there was about a day or two) or emailing you to ask for further explanation. Which as I stated at the start of this post, I am sorry about.

I don’t know what else I can say so I’ll leave it at that.

Yaro