As my SpamKill finger hammered the "delete" key earlier on my own blogs' comments, it occured to me belatedly that not every comment posted by an innocuous-sounding first name with a hyperlink - indicating a URL or email address supplied by the poster - necessarily indicated that the comment was spam. There may well have been legitimate, bona fide comments among those wiped out en masse in my spam clean up, but I'd not had the energy to click each one to find out.
Deleting comments unread on the assumption that they're spam is more a crime of omission than commission, but to the commentor whose contribution simply vanishes, the end result is the same.
And, had they posted something contentious, they may believe that the action was targeted, rather than random.
If someone posts a comment with which a blogger disagrees, should the blogger remove the comment, or engage with it? The issue raises for me shades of the Frank Ellis debate. Surely refuting an argument is better than silencing it? But what if the comment itself is deeply offensive - racist, or sexist, say - given the Valueswe embrace as a University, and the identity of this blogspot as UCT's blogspot, do we not have an obligation to promote those actively?
How does one balance rights - the right to dignity vs the right to freedom of speech - in the context of a medium that, while University-identified, reaches beyond the confines of an institution, of a State, of any notion of shared values (even Netiquette) - while still trying to protect the integrity of the debate, in some way?