I Can Think of Only a Couple Reasons to Delete Comments

And “they disagree with me” isn’t one of those reasons.

Why delete the comments of a very interesting thread? Because the commenters don’t agree with you. Really? Why, Brad? (no longer available) Last I looked, there were more than twenty comments on a very interesting and pertinent topic that affects all Realtors (archived: 2025).

For just a brief moment, I’ll pull from the archives some advice I learned in August of 2006 about pulling posts that can be applied to comments as well –

One of the best (and worst) parts of blog writing is that the author can be held accountable for each and every word written. There is no action that draws more attention to those words than pulling a post. Removed or not, they will always be there, thanks to the search engines, RSS readers and the like.

I made this mistake once before (if you click through, please excuse the formatting – it is pre-Wordpress). I hope to never do it again. Remembering mistakes makes one better.

Deleting what one has written shows a lack of confidence in one’s words, thoughts and opinions. Are there legal implications to deleting posts? Precedence being set that a blog is therefore less credible?

Sometimes it’s better to just admit that you were wrong. It’s easy.

Thanks to Eric for pointing this out (archived: 2012). I’m hoping that somebody PDF’d the thread before it was deleted.

If you’re a Realtor, spend the time educating yourself at Jay’s post (archived: 2025) and elsewhere about the threat potentially posed to us by our own Associations.

Update 27 October 2008: Now he’s deleted the trackbacks, too. I’d have taken a screenshot to prove that they were there and that he deleted them, but I’ve got a feeling my word’s proof enough.

Try reading this –

The 10 Signs of Intellectual Honesty

Pay specific attention to points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

When you’re wrong, just admit it rather than try to hide it.

Update 27 October 2008 #2 – For a timeline of how the Sarasota Association of Realtors is diligently working against one of its own members, read Marc’s post (archived: 2009).