Mental Floss posted a blog entry yesterday about seminal robots. In the entry about 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s HAL, the writer mistakely wrote Stanley Cooper instead of Stanley Kubrick. I pointed out the mistake, as did another person, whose comment was approved and right above my waiting-for-approval comment.

I visited the site today, as I do every day, and my comment and the other person’s comment have vanished. The blog entry has been corrected, but with no acknowledgement of the mistake (or that several readers wrote in about the correction, possibly).

I find that odd, because in the physical magazine, the editors always acknowledge their mistakes, usually with some self-deprecating humor. Also, most of the websites I visit always correct mistakes with a strikethrough, and an editor will admit the mistake in the comments field and say it’s been corrected.

It’s disappointing to me that one of my favorite magazines and websites eliminates comments to save face.

Update: A Mental Floss representative replied to me via Twitter: “Sorry we’ve offended you. This is a grey area. Usually typos we fix/delete comments, while we apologize for major screw-ups. Had it read ‘Alfred Hitchcock’ instead of ‘Stanley Cooper,’ it would have been different.”

I appreciate the clarification. All is good in the hood. Thank you.