From an Alan Rosenblatt post on Frogloop, encouraging campaigns to open up to comments:

Perhaps the biggest fear organizations face when considering creating a blog, discussion forum, or venturing into the world of online social networks is the “threat” of negative comments from the external community. This sense of fear is born of a long–held belief among traditional issue managers that you never repeat or provide a platform for your opponents’ message. But as I have been known to say, the Internet has rewritten this rule, in practice, even as research in the psychology of persuasion has never supported the belief.

Read the rest on Frogloop.

There’s a hearty and healthy rebuttal to his argument – negative comments can be a time suck. Responding to negative comments, policing them, and most importantly calming down your candidate/ED/boss when they get personally attacked (”Take that ugly lie down right now!”) takes time. Mucho time. Often, its not worth it.

Before you throw yourself open to open comments, ask yourself — do I have a more mission critical task than deleting 20 anonymous posts of “Go to hell you commies bastards”? Weigh that against your traffic, remembering that 98% of your visitors are already convinced about your issue/candidate/organization one way or the other, so only 2% are persuadable. If you’ve got the time — or better yet, if you’ve got a volunteer blogger with the time — then go for it.