An odd situation has occurred. A comment has been posted containing explicitly sexual words. I personally am not bothered by language that some find offensive but I do warn people when some of the things I link to contain such language so that those who do can avoid it.
The commenter clearly disliked what I wrote in the post The rise of racism and religion in Israel.
While I delete suspected spam without any qualms, I allow all genuine comments. This particular comment does not look like spam (it includes my name and does not contain any links to sites) but does not make any substantive point and consists of a purely personal attack on me. I did not want to delete it because people have a right to dislike me or disagree with me and say so.
I have decided that if necessary, I will censor particular words in comments using the common practice of replacing selected letters with hyphens. Those of you who are angered by a post and do want to use such language in comments can spare me some trouble by putting in your own hyphens.
When this happens (personal attacks rather than discussing the issue) some sites will disemvowel the comment. This involves removing all the vowels and allowing the comment to be posted.
This show that the blog host is willing to allow any non-spam comment but will take action against profanity and personal attacks. As a reader this makes the comment readable but with some difficulty. As a result, many readers will simply skip over it. Most moderators will add a line that says, “Due to profanity and personal attacks this comment has been disemvoweled.”
There is even a website that will remove the vowels for you.
http://www.disemvowelment.com/reemvowel.html
This is a better disemvowel tool.
http://www.novalis.org/cgi/vowel.cgi
The other link only re-emvowels.
Henry,
I am not sure if I am allowed to add software to the server but will check. Thanks!
There is a wordpress plugin that makes this very easy, Disemvoweler. The commenters are revealed for their aggressive stance and the website is still seen as moderated and open-minded. Great policy.