Isn't there a way to make people post their name on their posts? If it's just an anonymous personal attack, I'd say go ahead and delete it. But if it's an honest disagreement, such as some of the comments about the Mark Cuban deal, then I think it's good discussion and probably helpful to other filmmakers to read those discussions. Anonymous personal attacks are just lame. In the end, it's your blog and you can do what you want.

Let the comments accumulate as they will. Let them be so much graffiti. Your readers will glean what they need.

I think the comments that are attacking and not constructive are to be expected and even embraced because they come with the decision to use the internet as a media. It is the only form of media where this can really happen and therefore it should be allowed and over time I think it will be integrated and accepted as a part of the form. It has to be accepted because it is essential to making the internet what it is. I think the chinese gov't is having a very hard time dealing with this as well.

I'd like to see the comments that you interpret as "hostile" or "attacking" you. Can you post them?

It's a natural and inevitable byproduct of increasing discorporealization, and unfortunately it can't be "deleted." Imagine a Bresson film about blogging. There would be a righteously innocent young girl who blogged righteously and innocently, and the world would anonymously abuse and terrorize her until she died from some blog-related complication.

My sister-in-law had an anonymous "stalker" commenting on her blog for a long time--not only a hostile presence but a threatening one, often including references to my sister-in-law's home address and place of work. After several months of such harassment, my sister-in-law was able to determine by scrutinizing her website statistics that the author of these comments was an aunt who had exiled herself from the rest of the family as an explicit act of moral judgment against them. Unwilling to keep in touch with the family in traditional, healthy ways (presumably because all but she were morally amiss), the aunt chose to communicate her disdain through a channel which provided anonymity and a boundless opportunity to attack without repercussion. Predictably, Aunt Stalker became a fixture on the blog, an element which was not only anticipated but hotly discussed, providing a centrifugal force: what was in principle a rude interruption became in effect the blog's raison d'etre. My sister-in-law's posts concerned or addressed the "stalker," and the majority of the friendly comments on her posts were retorts and jeers directed at the stalker's retorts and jeers. It was a downward spiral. The blog no longer exists.

(This story is semi-autobiographical docu-fiction starring actual people as the actors who play them.)

I think the anonymous comments should remain as an illustration of the fundamental flaw of the institution of the blog. Also, they are funny. But the best reason to preserve them is that your posts and their appendant reactions seem a perfect metaphor for your filmmaking practices and reception. After all, you keep your hate mail, don't you?

(I would recommend reading Thomas de Zengotita's book "Mediated," which investigates the cultural imperative that begat the blog. The central thesis concerns the Flattered Self and the ways in which the Flattered Self needs to see itself reflected. In summary it sounds like New Age hooey, but the book is intellectually rigorous and surprisingly pragmatic.)

I face the same issue at the moment on a non-profit org site that has two opposing factions taking pot shots at each other across the bows.

My take on it is the bad vibes are as much about the poster as the postee and people get that.

If you can take it, let it flow. People will read between the lines.