So, a few days ago one of our more senior columnists, Dave Krug, noticed that Dreamhost seemed to be deleting comments on their own blog after their most recent service issues. I also blogged about it tangentially over on my own blog, and after a few days one of the Dreamhost employees got back to me and clarified things.
I’ll let Jeff from Dreamhost explain in his own words:
Turns out that Mr. Krug’€™s comments were eaten by a WordPress plug-in we use called SpamKarma – apparently it thought his comments were spam and retroactively removed them.
No DreamHost employee was involved in selectively censoring his comments. It was an automated removal.
I’€™ve posted a comment to this effect to his site, though it’€™s stuck in moderation until his approves it. We’€™ve explained the situation and have asked that if he has similar concerns in the future he contact us for an explanation before posting such accusations to his weblog. [me: I have since approved it] Either way, we do prefer to ‘€œlay it all out there’€? – we’€™re confident in the services we offer and feel that in the end a reasonable comparison of us versus our competitors will show us in a good light (warts and all!).
While we only have Jeff’s word to go on, I think it does make sense [disclosure alert: I host my own blog on dreamhost] — they’ve had service issues before, and have been nothing but transparent about what happens in the background. Opinions aside for whether or not they’re doing everything they can, or whether the service disruptions are or are not acceptable, I’ve noticed that in the past their blog never tries to hide what goes on. I’ll also agree with Jeff on this one — there have been some pretty nasty comments on their blog in the past which they’ve let go as well.
Bottom line: It may have looked like they started deleting comments, but it may have been an overzealous spam eating script.
*Dr. Tony Hung also blogs at BloggerTalks.com
