Comments, censorship and editorial balance

Yesterday the IPKat reminded readers that this blog does not refuse to post comments with which he and Merpel disagree. Since then it has received a number of comments to contrary effect. One, for instance, reads:

"I have posted much comments in latest days such as information from enlarge appeal board and trying to get letter to administrating council. No comment is ever put in the blog. No one comment. Is strange I think because much comments are more critic".

This Kat repeats: we are perfectly willing to post comments that are relevant to the post on which they are commenting, regardless of the position they take, and so long as they are not abusive or obscene.  He does not think it strange when only one side is represented in readers' comments since it's quite a frequent occurrence -- but he agrees that, the larger the number of comments received on any given blogpost, the more unlikely it is that readers will be reflecting the same view.

Incidentally, the IPKat and Merpel don't actually reach a consensus position and then press for it: the team consists of some ten IP enthusiasts from different countries and with different backgrounds. Sometimes some members of the blog team consult with one another or see each other's posts before they go live, but this is not the rule.

Another anonymous commenter wrote as follows:

"I have commented many times on this blog. Most comments are posted, but I find comments that tend to be critical, directly or indirectly, of the original poster (not o the patently-o type) tend to go amiss. I know that sometimes my postings do not appear because I failed to prove I was not a robot and closed the box without realizing, others I guess may have seen lost somewhere else along the way, but since the ipkat censorship assertion several months ago, I am finding more posts going missing as described.

If posts do go amiss for technical reasons are the ipkat administrators aware of this problem, and how are we to judge whether the censorship line has been crossed?"

For obvious reasons the IPKat's authors (we all check for comments to moderate) cannot be aware of a problem of posts that go missing unless someone tells them, If you have tried to post a comment and it has not appeared on the blog, please email the IPKat at theipkat@gmail.com (using an anonymous or pseudonymous email source if you like) and let us have sight of the text in question. We will either post it or, in the unlikely event that it does not meet our criteria, we will respond and explain why.  This Kat will also raise the question with his fellow Kats as to whether we might ask a suitably non-bloggy person to act as an independent referee in the case of comments that are received but not posted.

The following links may also be of some assistance:

• Diagnosing problems with Blogger comments here
• Troubleshooting comments for Blogger here

FURTHER NOTE: since posting this item, it occurs to this blogger that comments are sometimes received as emails to individual members of the blog team, and sometimes to an unattended Gmail account that is used solely for the purposes of being able to log on to Blogger and compose blog posts. Also, some people try to respond to blog posts which they have received by email, clicking "reply" and responding to the Google Group which sends out the emails in the first place.  PLEASE: if you want to post a comment, can you seek to do so initially via the "Comment" link at the foot of the blog post upon which you seek to make a comment.