I know everyone, including myself, is sick of the fact that some users just report comments for no reason, right? Well, here's what I suggest. When they click on "report", they should type in a reason why exactly. If the admin thinks it is not a good reason, they will disregard it, no questions. My first 2 reports were when I was doing my job and criticing someone's comic and telling him how he can make it better. What happens? He reports BOTH comments. It got me pissed off.

I think I'd like it better if authors could just delete comments on their comics without people's warn level increasing. There's some comments that aren't offensive, but are irrelevant, and the only way to get them off my page is to report them or mute them (which leaves behind this big ugly MUTED box that people always ask me about).

I think there are a couple misunderstandings here about reported comments.

The system is a bit of a leftover since the rating days, when the ratings determined a comic's rank. So much sniping went on that admins had to start moderating that somehow, and put in a process to punish people who abused the commenting system.

Ever since 1-5 ratings were changed to just another type of comment (ie, no impact on the comic account), comment reporting through admins is no longer necessary. However, because the coding never caught up with that, there's no way for comic authors to just remove comments directly (which is what we'd prefer). It all has to come through us. Normally we just delete all of them- and comments that are deleted by us do NOT get warnings, unless we think they are abusive in some way- so, darkpower101010, feel free to report any comments you just don't want any more. The people who left the comments won't get warnings (unless it's obvious they were trying to bait you or something.)

Comics on DD, and the comic pages, are owned by their creators. If they don't want something to appear on their page, we can't MAKE them keep it. Who are we to judge whether something is appropriate to keep on someone's page or not? Something we think is funny may actually be hurtful, or something we think is way out of line is actually a joke that's between the comment leaver and the author. It's the comic creator's page- they should have full management of it. They don't even have to have the commenting box at all if they don't want to- they can just code it out.

There's NO clause to the site that says 'you must read and accept the comments and/or criticisms of others, and keep it on your page even if you don't like it or for some other reason just don't want it there.' the comments are there for the comic creators, not for the people leaving the comments, or for commenters to talk to each other. Comments are just a convenient way to leave messages and different authors use them in different ways. Some people report everything that is just a rating with no words- others delete anything critical- others delete anything that is pure praise- some participate in commenting conversations and others ignore them completely. That's their right. DD just provides the place, we don't dictate that people have to use the features in specific ways.

Think of it this way- if Person A left a critical comment on Person B's comic, and then Person B 'reports' it because they want it deleted.... why would Person A have a problem with that? Their critique should have been for Person B, NOT for all the people reading Person B's comic. If Person B wants it removed, it at least shows that they have read Person A's comment, whether they intend to take up any advice or not. Just because the critique was posted as a public comment instead of a private e-mail doesn't mean that the author wants it to stay public. (In fact, it could be seen as very rude if someone leaves a really harsh critique in public- it creates a kind of exposed position for the comic creator and is publicly challenging them to do or say something about it. By making it public the commenter is kind of using the comic's audience against it, by making it a party to the negative criticism.)

So, that's why admins will delete any comment reported to them without question. For whatever reason, they're things that the authors don't want on their pages and we have no right to question their intent or dictate what they should have to keep on their pages or not. If the comments are abusive, etc, then we can add a warning if we like, but for the most part we consider the comments a right of the author to keep or delete as they see fit.