the conundrum of comments - what to do?

Yesterday friend Trevor Cook lamented the personal invective and other undesirable stuff which can be associated with some comments sections on blogs.

As a low-profile blogger on a hard to find street corner I manage to avoid much of that - even though I do have a modest political statement visible in the lower right hand corner of this blog which I knew would one day inevitably draw some adverse comment. 

Today I opened this blog to find an anti-semite dropped by with an example of his intellect. [ It is the third comment down in this comment stream ]Update 18 December 2008:  offensive comment has been deleted.

What to do?  Leave it displayed as testimony that proves my and Nico's points about holocaust deniers, or tip it out as one would any other foul smelling piece of garbage?

I'll render my decision to myself in a couple of days.

UPDATE:  18 December 2008.  Offensive comment has now been deleted.

Comments

[Trevor Cook]

Yeah, I know it's a connundrum but personally I think I would take the view that it is my blog and ultimately I (i.e. you in this case) has the right to impose some standards. This is especially true since the commenter's own blog looks a bit dodgy (no info on the About page for instance and a title that is too stupid to be plausible). On the other hand, I do have sympathy for the view that leaving this idiot's stuff up there probably does him more harm than good. But again, do you respond and attack the flaws in his argument, just to make sure, or leave it alone. I find the responding bit very exhausting after awhile.

[Brett]

It's a tough one ... I've only attracted a few people like this (actually, not nearly so bad). If their comments were off-topic or obviously trolling I'd just delete them. If they were on-topic but stupid or harmless, I'd probably leave them but not bother responding (or if I did, just laugh at them). If they were on-topic but presented some sort of reasoned argument, even if totally misguided, I'd try to engage with it and show them where they went wrong. As Trevor says, it can get very tiring -- I went a few rounds with one commenter like that and I was very patient and courteous, but some regular readers told me offline that I'd been *too* patient and courteous!

In this case, this guy does seem like he might be trolling. I'd probably delete, or else point and laugh.