March 3, 2010 
As readers will know, I copied some comments from CA comparing Jones to Mengele. I was later informed that Steve McIntyre moderated the comments, deleting them completely. I ask my readers the following question:
How should I deal with the deleted posts comments over at CA:
The Policy Lass 
SheWonk,
Many of my recent posts over at Climate Audit have been pulled, not because they break any of the blog rules, but because they seem to annoy the moderators so much. In the case of Jean S, after he snipped me he got so angry he quit.
Let that be an awful warning! The only reason to consider taking down a comment is if the poster puts in a request.
I don’t understand fully understand the questions in the poll.
I don’t think you’d be expected to keep up with all the moderations on another website; nor am I sure of why you’d want to repost such an offensive comment, but I don’t know the context. Every site attracts nasties and loonies.
In any case, if your post is to illustrate a particular point I see nothing particularly wrong with leaving your post there but explaining that the offensive comment was subsequently deleted from the original site. Of course, if that negates the point you were making, then you could decide to treat your post differently and cut it altogether with an explanation as to why you cut it. (I’m not convinced your poll will help your decision on this matter.)
My criticism of CA has always been that if McIntyre took auditing climate science seriously and treated it professionally, he would have a fully moderated blog where he might have a group of knowledgeable blog members who had expertise in various areas — code, data, stats, climate science — really talented skeptics — and they collaborated on posts meant to actually audit climate science and educate the public.
There might be open threads to allow readers to ask questions and suggest topics, but there would be none of the chorus echo chamber that takes place now and no need to moderate the crazies and extremists. The blog owner would also act in a professional manner and would keep the personal comments to a minimum, and certainly no innuendo.
I might even respect such a blog.
Imagine if the auditors for a private company went online and started posting snide and rude innuendos about the client, inviting public comments from every disgruntled customer. Would you trust them to do a professional job of auditing the company? I know I wouldn’t nor would the auditor have a contract for very long.
The fact that the blog is open and allows so much mindlessness, so much junk in comments and that there is so much non-science and non-auditing going on makes me suspect that the blog was never meant as much more than a way to generate heat rather than shed light, let alone improve science.
That’s just my opinion, of course.
SheWonk, for what it is worth, your above summary is IMHO bang on. CA is a fraud, really, and just a front to smear and undermine science, under the guise of science. Quite clever really, and a strategy that I doubt very much that McI came up with by himself. What is sad is how many CA and WUWT are deceiving, which will be to everyone’s detriment in the long term.