Regretfully, some comments are caught by moderation and bloggers don’t pay attention. WordPress blogs lists moderated comments in their Comments panel, but some don’t. They have to visit that specific panel to see what’s being held back. Laziness or forgetfulness can be the reason.

There are also many bugs in some versions of WordPress, WordPress Plugins and other blogging programs, especially those which use CAPTCHAs and other torture tests that can cause comments to be lost. It happens. Even to me.

None of these are justification or excuses, just facts on the ground. Still, a blogger has a right to control comments on their blog, and commenters have a right to leave the best “quality” comments they can that continue the conversation. I wrote about this in How NOT to Comment on Comments.

I will never do or say anything that will take away a bloggers right to control comments, which are content, on their blogs. I will however, continue to work to educate commenters to not waste a blogger or reader’s time with “Thank you for this interesting point” or “Seems interesting. I’ve now subscribed to your blog.” Sorry, Reztar, but that’s the truth. While these may seen compliments, such comments do not continue the conversation and are often seen as ways to get link juice and attention rather than truly entering into the spirit of the dialog.

But thank you just the same.

The other thing that bothers me is the people who delete my comments; I can only suppose they do this because they didn’t like what I had to say when I don’t agree with them. Apparently not everyone wants real dialog on their blog. I don’t believe I’m rude or overly insulting.

Michael: There is a lot of clutter on blogs that can go, including the meta links and such, but blog stats are known fakes so reader don’t take them seriously. And if you do…a blog is worth its weight in honors if the content meets your needs. Stats mean little to serious readers if your blogs meets their needs.

They are great gimmicks though, but totally unnecessary. I’m proof.

The ONLY reason the Akismet stats are shown on my blog, and they’ve only been there for a short time, is because Matt Mullenweg asked me to display them. It’s not enough I write tons of articles promoting the snot out of Akismet, which I adore, he wants a mini-ad, too.

Yeah. Your site is the example of “successful” non-self hosted blog..

>>Not big deals, and certainly of no interest to him, but the rest of us who had to be near him cared – a lot (holding our noses).

If we have some sidebars like Meta (Site Admin, Logout) or SPAM BLOCKED in our blog then we can say that those sidebars are no value for readers.. but why stats? stats can make the readers impressed about our blog.. they may probably guess whether a particular blog is worth to read or not… i understand that it is not 100% accurate but they at least can guess whether our blog is well-visited or not..

Just my opinion, Thanks..

As for stats, personally, while everyone loves their stats and wants to show them off, the point is that only a few stats influence readers. Let’s put readers first and stop cluttering our sites with stuff we want that offers little or no value to readers.

I had a friend a long time ago who told me repeatedly that he didn’t care what he looked like or how he looked. I told him that was fine for him, but the rest of us had to look at him and we didn’t like what we were seeing. Bathing regularly would be a step in the right direction, as well as wearing clothes not covered with two weeks of lunch. Not big deals, and certainly of no interest to him, but the rest of us who had to be near him cared – a lot (holding our noses).

I look at blog clutter like stats the same way.