In general: The Engadget comments section is a place for our readers to engage in discussion about the posts — it’s really that simple. We encourage that discussion, and we’ll be the first to admit that lots of times our readers offer insights that lead us to update our posts, or direct us to entirely new angles and stories. We love that, and we love our readers. We seriously do.

Some basic ideas on commenting here. We think that comments should always be on topic. We encourage and welcome debate, even if it’s fervent, because we know how much you care about this stuff — we care about it, too! However, your comments should be reasonably polite and wherever possible, lighthearted. Making personal attacks against other commenters, publications, or our own editors seriously degrades the community and quality of the discussion, and it won’t be tolerated.

While we’re fine with disagreements, we’re not that crazy about being the battleground for epic fanboy wars. We want you to debate, but when that debate devolves into name calling and / or cyclical fanaticism (especially when you’ve moved way off topic), it’s not a good use of anyone’s brainpower. Also, if you’ve come to Engadget for the express purpose of whipping people into a frenzy (or whipping yourself into a frenzy), don’t expect to stick around very long. It’s easy to spot the folks who want to have a healthy debate and the folks who just want to troll. On that note, we encourage our readers and commenters to reach out to us personally and report other commenters who seem to be acting inhuman… or inhumane. Together, we believe we can improve the quality of comments on the site. We are aware of the fact that any system like ours can be gamed — and we’re aware of the fact that people actually do things like make multiple profiles and argue with themselves simply to cause problems. Just be aware we’ll delete and ban you for that, too!

Comment deletion: There are many reasons your comment might be deleted, but here are some of the most common ones. Spamming of any type, be it human or robot-generated, is always deleted. If you’re trying to sell something in comments, you’re a spammer. Trolling is also unacceptable — we recognize that a lot of you trolls don’t even realize that you’re trolls, but believe us — you are. We’ll delete your comments if we feel they’re disruptive or annoying. We also delete comments that are racist, sexist, overly obscene, or offensive in any way. We delete comments which are personal attacks — whether directed at an editor or another commenter. Finally, we reserve the right to delete any comment at our discretion (please see below).

If you create a history of trolling or other offensive behavior, we’ll just ban your account. That means that your username, email, and potentially IP address will be barred from our system, and you’ll no longer be able to comment.

You deleted my comment. Isn’t that censorship? No. Engadget, along with its partner Weblogs, Inc. and parent company AOL allow comments in order to further the discussion, engage our readers, and to let interested parties have a good time (and maybe learn something)! Engadget’s commenting sections are NOT open forums where you can say whatever you please, and commenting on Engadget is not a right of law passed down to you in the Constitution. Engadget is a news site and a business. The editorial staff does not delete comments without good reason, but deletions are always at the discretion of the editors. There are thousands of active commenters on Engadget, and we try to keep the comment sections a fun, engaging experience for all of its readers.
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I’m really amazed that they’ve gone to such extreme measures – it sounds like they didn’t like what their users were saying about them, so they’ve just hidden all the comments, which seems a bit of a cop out.