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Foreclosure Help and Hater Comments

Here is an email I got today:

Subject: Listen, you gotta start deleting those hate comments

Those haters are ruining your blog. It is because of their rubbish, that your intended audience (people who are genuinely interested in what you’re doing) are slowly slipping away from your blog. That’s why you’re getting less and less positive responses – the haters scared most of the nice guys away!

Remember, it is your blog. It is not your job to give every cuckoo a place to post his garbage. On the contrary: Your job is make sure that your blog is enjoyable useful and clean.

Yours Truly,
One of your regular readers

This person has a point. I’ve been told this many times before…

My intended audience are two groups: 1) people who just want to see what happens to me and 2) people facing foreclosure who need help.

If I’m going to turn this into a foreclosure help site and create a safe environment for people in foreclosure to share their troubles and receive help from the community I will need to address the negative comments. The negativity here is driving good people away!

Look in the comments on the last post and see how Phillip got personally attacked for giving me some constructive feedback (though I removed the really bad ones). Look what has been happening with Nigel for trying to bring a neutral light on my situation. Then there was Duane, Amy and other people that suffered harm. This tends to happen every time somebody leaves a positive comment or something helpful. That’s not good!

I asked my short sale realtor in Modesto to see if he wants to come on the blog and write some stuff about the foreclosure process. He refused to do that because he has been on this blog a couple of times and became repulsed by the hatred and negativity here. He said he would be willing to contribute his short sale tips only after I make this into a positive and supportive environment. I’m sure this will be the reaction I will get if I try to bring on any other foreclosure expert to do some guest-blogging here.

How am I going to turn this into a positive foreclosure help site with this amount of hate? As much as I love freedom of speech and keeping things “organic” around here I will need to address this soon. I’ve threatened to get more strict on moderation but I didn’t really do too much about it. I still approve about 95% of the comments.

Part of me enjoys some of the hater humor and jokes, even if it’s at my own expense. I don’t get affected by it. In fact, this is part of life. Every entrepreneur faces negativity on their way to success. Other people tell me they come here for the comments too.

However, when the negativity start affecting well-meaning people and the future goals of this blog, then it starts crossing the line. I’m not here to be the class clown as my primary goal. I actually want to make a positive difference and help people in foreclosure by sharing my story.

Any ideas?

By the way, I have some bad news on the CashCall situation… will update on that and other loose ends tomorrow.

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