Comment Moderation
A few people have asked about how comments are moderated so I thought I'd clarify. You can read our "Rules of Engagement" for more details. — Since launch, we've posted about 80% of comments and directed 18% to Dell support for resolution.
Context & Ripple Effects
Comment visibility was already a live theme in early 2006, when third-party tools began pulling conversations out of the dark across blogs; Dell's post applies that same question to a corporate blog, where every deleted or redirected comment carries brand risk.
Dell came into mid-2006 with a mixed record on direct customer communication — a February retreat from its Digital Jukebox MP3 players after failing to dent the iPod, and a January slip that briefly exposed future Inspiron specs through Google's index — so publishing a moderation policy is part of arguing the blog is a genuine listening channel, not a press office.
First-order effects
- Roughly one in five submitted comments — 18% — is routed to Dell support rather than posted, quietly turning the weblog into a triage layer in front of the existing support organization.
- Pointing readers to the Rules of Engagement replaces silent deletion with stated criteria, so commenters know in advance what gets published and what gets escalated.
Second-order effects
- If a fifth of inbound comments are support requests, the blog stops being a marketing-owned property and starts needing shared workflows and metrics with Dell's support operation.
- Vendors opening comments publicly create demand for comment-management tooling of the kind startups like cocomment were building in 2006, giving such tools an enterprise use case beyond individual bloggers.
Third-order effects
- Disclosed moderation ratios and written engagement rules may harden into expected practice for corporate blogs, becoming table stakes for credibility with readers who assume filtering otherwise.
- A blog operating as support intake points toward formally staffed community-response channels, where vendors organize headcount and measurement around public comments rather than treating them as ephemera.
The trend: Corporate weblogs are evolving from broadcast channels into moderated front doors for customer support, with vendors under pressure to disclose how they filter.