Comment moderation

So, in addition to the word verification feature, there is now a Comment Moderation feature on Blogger. (Was that what they were doing today from noon to 2 PST?) Basically, if I turn this on, it'll hold all comments until I approve them to be posted.

I haven't really had problems with spam or flames, but this feature appeals to me for a totally different reason:

Blogger is supposed to send me an email every time someone posts a comment. That way, if someone comments on a really old post, I'll know about it, without having to scan through all my archives all the time.

This feature occasionally actually works! I'll usually get an email when there's a comment on a post that's still on the front page, and every now and then I'll even get an email for a comment on an older post. However, there are plenty of comments that I've discovered by accident while looking for posts...so I imagine there are others out there in my archives that I've never even seen. The email system is flawed.

Because of that, it's tempting to me to turn on comment moderation. There, I would be able to see all comments; they'd sit on a special page in the Blogger admin waiting for me to approve them.

The bad thing about doing that is that people wouldn't be able to see their comments posted immediately. Plus, it would give the impression that I'm censoring people, which wouldn't be the case. I have never deleted a comment on this blog except when there was a double post, in which case I nuked one of the doubles. I'm really not interested in censoring what people say. If someone comes over here and decides to be a total asshat, I'm going to leave their comment for the world to see. I figure the long-term satisfaction of possible ruined reputations (and personal embarrassment) is well worth any short-term unhappiness I might experience. (Maybe I'm a little bit evil, I don't know.)

So I'm still thinking about it. But if I do decide to enable moderation, I'll put up some sort of notice somewhere about it, basically repeating what I said in the previous paragraph.