~DovSherman

With the recent removal the Comment Deletion tool, it is no longer possible to delete any deviation comment, no matter how obscene, illegal, or harassing. The tool has even been removed for admins so, while complaining about a problem comment might get the commentator banned, the comment itself will stay.

I had someone post a clearly harassing comment on one of my deviations and include a large obscene ASCii drawing. Since the Help Desk insisted that there was nothing they could do about it, I waited for a week for the tool to come back.

Then I remembered that the Search Tool has been "in progress" for about a year with no change at all. (If you use the Search tool, it won't find any deviations posted since the day the Search tool was introduced.) So it seems like that the Comment Deletion tool may be a long time coming.

In the meantime, although the dA TOS forbids obscene, harassing, or illegal comments, that policy is no longer enforceable. I wonder if this is why the Weekly Development post says that there is a dramatic increase in Harassment reports.

I wound up simply deleting the deviation that has an obscene comment, sadly losing all comments and favs that went with it. Today, I realized that I can simply shut down the comments throughout my gallery for the same effect but it also prevents any new legitimate comments from being posted. This also means that existing comments are currently hidden but, thankfully, can be restored when it is safe to allow comments again.