Scenario.

You run a blog with a comments section. You have many regular readers, some of whom leave comments. Among these are Commenter A and Commenter B.

Commenter A leaves a comment on a particular blog article. Commenter B then leaves a further comment on the same article but not in relation to the article itself, rather in response to Commenter A's comment. Commenter B not only disagrees with Commenter A's views he also calls Commenter A a "weapon-grade cretin".

Commenter A then sends you an e-mail claiming that he has been libelled and if he does not get an apology he will take legal action.

What do you do?

First things first. What you cannot do is deny any responsibility. As much as you may be loath to have to 'police' your comments section, if you own the blog then you are responsible for anything and everything that is published on the blog (and, paradoxically, the more 'moderated' the comments, the higher this bar of responsbility rises).

So, you do have to respond to Commenter A's letter. But, that said, the first thing you should do is to check whether Commenter A is a person who can be identified from the comments he has left. If he has chosen to post comments anonymously by, say, using a pseudonym, then he is going to find it very hard to claim that he has suffered damage to his reputation for the simple reason that the defamatory remark cannot be linked to the real person.

However, if Commenter A is a person who can be identified from his posting then the next question to consider is whether he has grounds to complain about the remarks left by Commenter B. Are those remarks libellous?

In both cases, I think the answer is 'yes'. However, that is my view on balance and only just on balance.

Most of the time, rude remarks can be dismissed as mere vulgar language. Occasionally, a rude remark may qualify as a 'fair comment' . But the test to be applied is the degree of maliciousness in the remark. In this case, I think the term 'weapon-grade cretin' falls just outside the acceptable realms of fair comment or mere insulting language.

So Commenter A has a valid complaint. What to do? Well, assuming that Commenter B is not your employee then there is no way that you can force Commenter B to retract his remark or make an apology. But what you can (and should) do is to delete the offending comment and then write to Commenter A informing him that the comment has been deleting and apologising for any hurt caused.

In the vast majority of cases, this will smooth ruffled feathers and settle the matter. However, depending on how hurt (or how determined) Commenter A turns out to be, he may decide to press the matter further. If so, you may have to publish a full apology yourself and, possibly, even offer some token compensation (or the lawyers' fees if Commenter A went as far as to instruct one).

Though, for the most part, simple common sense measures will do the trick. But the best way to solve problems like this is to head them off at the pass, so to speak.

This is why everyone who has a comments facility on their blog should also have a 'comments policy' that warns all readers that comments may be edited or deleted for reason of law or even good taste. And remember to keep a regular eye on your comments section. If you think a particular comment is libellous or gratuitously insulting then you should seriously consider deleting it on the spot.

But if you also want to encourage an atmosphere of open argument and free speech then you need to strike a balance. The best way to do that is to decide beforehand where you boundaries are going to be and then enforce them.

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