What would your policy be on blog comments?

I’m occasionally asked for advice by Liberal Democrat bloggers, particularly those just starting up, on how they should approach comments. Should they allow them all? Or moderate just those that are libellous? But what about abusive ones? Or ones that might not be from who they say they are? Or comments from political opponents? And so on.

Sites often move through different policies over time, including perhaps most notably news sites.

My general advice is:

• Moderate comments that just contain abuse – because they don’t add anything, and often put other people off from commenting (though that won’t stop someone occasionally accusing you of being the worst censor since the invention of the written word just because you didn’t publish their comment saying YOU’RE A LOSER HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
• Moderate comments that pretend to be from someone they’re not – e.g. a Conservative councillor pretending to be an unhappy Liberal Democrat member. (Who know why it seems to be Conservatives that are so keen on this, but in just about every case where someone has been tracked down, it was a Conservative rather than a Labour activist.)
• But do allow people to use a pseudonym as there are all sorts of reasonable circumstances in which someone may wish to not use their real name (e.g. a teacher who wants to keep their online political discussions private from the children they teach).
• Allow comments from political opponents, as long as they don’t fall foul of any of the above.
• Be clear about what sort of tone you want and what its implications are – a free for all, which may mean a small number of (often white, male) commentators dominating, or deliberately cultivating breadth of contributions?

But what are your views? Would you alter any of these? Or add anything to the list?