You bring up a couple of interesting points. Personally, the only comments that I get that I don’t respond to are comments that a) don’t require a response, and b) comments that I never saw. I rely on email notification to tell me that someone posted. Sometimes, they don’t send me an email and I only see comments when someone new responds to the same post.

I’m not a fan of bloggers that just put stuff out there and then never interact with their commenters. As you mentioned, commenting is part of being a good netizen. The reward for people being that way SHOULD be responding to or at least acknowledging their comments… Just like it’s common courtesy to say “thank you” when someone says “bless you” after you sneeze.

Like Phil, I’ve never used comment moderation. On especially rare occasions, I have removed a comment that was plainly just spam or a purely self-serving and non-relevant link to someone else’s site. But I’m so grateful for ANY comments my blog gets – contentious or otherwise – that I’d never dream of doing anything to hamper that. It’s bad enough that Blogger handles comments so much less elegantly than WordPress…

Slightly off-topic but still worth stating, commenting on other’s blogs is part & parcel of being a good, responsible netizen. Perhaps blogging should be reward enough all on it’s own, but comments are the surest validation you can give a blogger.

That’s another good point. I try to keep my blog about 90%-95% “swear word”-free… meaning my own words that I write & post. For that reason, I would feel the urge to edit egregious/unnecessary cursing in any comments I received.

Similarly, as I mentioned before.. This isn’t the location for commenters to air their personal beefs with other commenters. :) Take that off-line or to your own blogs or to the back-channel gossip zone.

The 5%-10% difference that I find in my writing is when I’m just not personally satisfied that I’m honestly self-expressed unless I use the curse words in my statement(s). Even then, I like to attempt to excuse myself ahead of time, hahaha for whatever THAT’S worth. :D