…do you leave the comment in place and unanswered? Or what else can you do?
Put another way, what would you do if a commenter started claiming that Jews committed the ritual murder of children, or presented some of the classic hideous stereotypes of African-Americans? You certainly can’t argue against these despicable positions point by point. So do you just leave the comments out there?
My own position is that, at some point, some comments go beyond the realm of controversy and become outright hate speech. At that point, I will simply delete them, and mark the commenter so that s/he can no longer post on the site. Call it censorship if you wish.
When I have done this in past years, commenters have protested that my actions are “cowardly”: this from people who never give their real names in posts, and hide behind the mask of anonymity. No, I am not going to debate people who believe that the Jews caused 9/11, or that Muslims are a human sacrifice cult. Nor am I going to leave their nonsense in place on any website with which I am associated.
The easiest way to deal with trolls and nut jobs is to post a clear set of rules or guidelines for commenting on the blog, and to enforce them. I had trouble with some extremist trolls off and on when I first started out. Those problems have long since become rare though. Back in ’08 I posted my [url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/2008/07/guidelines-for-comments.html]guidelines for commenting[/url] and and they are clearly linked in the sidebar. When someone challenges me, I just point them to the guideline and 98% of the time that’s the end of the story.