Comment Responsibility

So, here’s a question: When should a blog owner remove a comment? I’ve encountered this concern several times, as have others. I have removed a couple of entries from my blogs at the request of people whom I’d covered in the posts; it turned out that I’d found blogs that the original authors were apparently embarassed to have me find. (I’m going to sanitize one of those stories and publish it here when I get the time.)

But, I’m not talking about removing one’s own material. I’m talking about removing a comment someone left. And I’m not referring to comments that are pretty clearly comment spam (thank you very much, Akismet!). Nor is this a matter of libel, profanity, etc. I’m concerned about what is, I think, a relatively unique case.