Are comments on your blog a good thing? Some say yes, some say no. I personally like to get feedback and share comments with my readers. Not everyone does.
Some people are afraid of allowing comments due to lawsuits that might arise from what people post. One way to alleviate that concern is to only allow authenticated users post comments. That can get painful though on a mostly anonymous internet.
A good article that you can read is The Legal Issues with Comments fromn the Blog Herald. The author, Jonathan Bailey, covers Libel, Copyright and Trademark issues. He concludes the article with:
All in all, there are many reasons to consider dropping comments from your blog, but legal issues should not be one of them. In the vast majority of cases, if you approach commenting with good faith, the risk is very low and you are more likely engaging in riskier behavior in your blog itself.
With that in mind, it is still very important to be careful about what you say and publish as the protections offered to you for what your commenters say do not apply to your own words.
Everyone can be held accountable for what they post, just not what other people say, at least in the vast majority of cases.
This is a very clear and easy to read article from a very informed writer. He's not a lawyer but he also writes Plagiarism Today.
So how would i conclude this? I say you should allow comments. We become better bloggers by interacting, not by being talking heads.
Take care,
LewisC
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