My little corner of Opera

What does this mean? It means that you should treat other people the way you want them to treat you. We all want people to be nice and respectful towards us, so we treat others the same way; however some people take pleasure in hurting and torturing others for their own personal gain. Not only are these people childish and immature, but in my personal opinion, they have no soul. The worst of the lot often being the ones that cause the greatest harm to others, and are truely evil; fortunately the vast majority of the people who do this are nowhere near this bad, and can be turned around with a lot of TLC (tender loving care). Especially the ones who were once "normal" but are now acting out of character by being hateful - a clear sign of a mental illness that unfortunately most of today's "mental health professionals" (yes that's sarcasm at work) are ill-equipped and trained to deal with properly.

These people do not need to "find Jesus" or join a church to "be saved from eternal damnation"; sometimes they just need to be exposed to something that's so horrendous that even they can't ignore it, turn a blind eye, or even make things worse for the person/people suffering. Other times we need to confront them directly, taking care not to stoop down to their level by engaging them constructively and determining what really makes them do the things they do. Doing so may appear to embolden them, but usually such "prodding" is short-lived due to a weak will and normally results in the person breaking down, finally admitting that there is a problem and that they need help. Counseling them at this point can be detrimental to the person's well being if this is not handled properly, and can be downright dangerous for us as well.

When a person with such issues finally seeks the help they need, whether it is from a friend, familiy member, priest, rabbi, iman, coworker, employer or a professional counselor, they need to be treated as human beings worthy of respect, but at the same time they also need to be sheltered from the realities that their current situation and their previous attitudes have put them in. No 12-step program is going to cure their ills, it's going to take time. Now, since I'm not a mental health professional, I'm going to end this little tangent and get back to the topic at hand - hate comments on blogs.

When dealing with a commenter who leaves hate remarks, it is often our first instinct as bloggers to remove the offending remarks and be done with it, which can embolden the commenter to step things up to the next level by personally attacking us, and our loyal readers. There's also no cookie-cutter solution to dealing with each and every hate commenter either, since you have multiple types anyway. But you can take measures to protect yourself from the majority of them.

Enable comment moderation. Make sure that first-time posters (or as many as you want, to help ensure a level of "trust" is established) have all comments moderated and pre-approved before being posted. Usually, this will be enough to deter all but the most determined of the bunch. If you go for more than one approved comment, do not specify how many need to be approved before comment moderation is turned off for that particular user. They don't need to know this, and if you do tell them, well, you've just defeated the purpose.

For those of us who are using My Opera's blogging service, turn off anonymous comments. If someone has something to say, they should register for an account. At least this way if you get a dedicated hate commenter, you can block their user account and report them to Opera Software, which will then take further action for you.

If someone does get past your first line of defense, you can (or should be able to at least), block their email address and possibly even IP as well. Granted, this won't work if a person is using a free email service or a proxy server, but like I said, some people are just determined to make your day miserable. My Opera users should refer to the above paragraph, for obvious reasons.

Do not engage them on their level. They want to make you miserable - especially if they tell all of your friends what a bad person they think you are. The ones who revel in destroying relationships are often the sickest of them all, and should seek professional help. Don't make them feel like they have power over you, your blog, your friends and family or your life. If you do engage them directly, be very careful, for the truly evil ones are by far the most cunning and manipulative.

There's more I can say here, but I'm not going to at this point in time. I need to run to the store and get some things for the house, but I'll be back later. If you wish to leave a comment, register for My Opera and feel free to leave your reply, as long as it's constructive.