Ben Metcalfe raises an interesting point:
Of course, I’m not advocating the editing of comments, but ultimately it’s important for a blog owner to be able to do so - in the event of inappropriate, libellous or offensive content for example.
At the end of the day, blog owners need to decide which comments get published and which don’t. Your blog is your castle.
I don’t necessarily agree with every decision, but I have to respect it. If my comment gets rejected, I can post my opinion on my own blog. And if nothing else, moderation is the only thing standing between us and a sea of comment spam. I moderate comments. I hate doing that, I think it’s annoying to my readers. But not as annoying as having comment threads full of solicitations for online casinos and erotic services.
I designed co.mments so it only reads comments that have been published, whether automatically or after moderation. It will also remove comments from the database, if it detects that they are removed from the blog. It makes no judgement, it simply respect the blogger’s authority of their own blog.
And another quote from Ben:
The reason this issue is arising is simply because there is no standard way to semantically represent comments.
As Betsy Devine points out in the comments section, there’s some initial work on a microformat for comments. I’m an active participator in Microformats and I can’t wait for this effort to get off the ground. But I also know it will take a while. Be hopeful, but don’t hold your breath.
meggiecat