Anonymous comment vs free speech
When we started our blog, one of the early questions was do we allow "Anonymous" comments. The way we saw it is that the Internet is the last bastion of free speech and therefore anyone should be able to say anything. The problem with anonymous comments is that 99% of the time they will be trolls. And moderating comments is the same as censorship which I'd imagine all bloggers feel strongly against. What then?
@Binoy: Makes sense. But ref your last point, doesn't every blogger expect many comments? 
@Sriharsha: Perfect! You've pretty much summed it up right there. And given the nature of my blog, "healthy" discussion is straight up, exactly what we want!!!
@ Hakuna Matata: Absolutely. Moderated comments seem like, "I want to see if you're saying good things before I let you say them."
The thing with deleting spam though... whenever I see a blog with the line "Comment deleted," my first reaction is that is was somebody trolling rather than it could be spam. Not sure if that happens to anyone else though.
Moderated comments somehow make me feel like the blogger is really not interested in any criticism or views against his/her opinion.
The purpose of moderation is stopping spam. I prefer to just delete the spam comments than enable moderation.
As for anonymous, if people are really hell bent on hiding their identity, they will do it using fake ids. I've disabled anonymous comments - if you want to be anonymous, go that extra mile I say. :P
@Saurabh: I totally agree with you. I have nothing against someone not liking a post... it's supposed to be a free country right. My problem is with trolls and it's very obvious when someone doesn't agree and when someone is trolling.
@Renie: I actually hadn't thought of that... that's very true though. If someone wants to be a prat then no matter how many controls you have in there, he will be a prat.
So I guess stick with allowing anonymous comments as well I guess.
Even if you allow anonymous comments, what's to stop someone from using a fake name & email address?
Hi, How are u ?
nice topic bro... But moderating comments is better than anonymous comments coz true bloggers allow comments to appear be it in their favor or against coz blogging is d best way to express urself online and tru bloggers stick to this... By allowing anonymous posts, we may ruin d importance of free speech because of d spam, etc.
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