On the blogs you handle, you do not post comments you receive that are just links of advertisements. However, you have noticed that advertisers are getting much more savvy with their postings. They create a comment to a posting but it's really just a sales pitch for their product. What should you policy be regarding these types of posts? Should you allow advertising postings on your blogs? Where do you draw the line?


Note: this scenario, based on real-life experiences, was developed for the 2007 ASBPE Editorial Conference. Visit www.asbpe.org/about/code.htm to read about the group's Code of Ethics.

This is a tough one. I suspect there are many variations of this approach, although I consider blogs generally not useful, rumor-based and needing serious fact checking. One response is to edit such entries to take out the marketing hype and leave any nuggets of pertinent information. Your rules on comments should indicate this might be done. Or you can ask the submitter for a rewrite (difficult to do). Or you can run it as is; after all, there are tons of blogs out there carrying such messages. Or just say no.