It wouldn't be the Internet, it wouldn't be social media, if there weren't trolls, cranky folk and spammers floating around in the pool too, so unfortunately it's a fact of life, even in the new universe of Google Plus. I don't know how they creep in, actually, but as soon as millions of users showed up, well, then the people that hide under rocks appeared too.

Fortunately the Google Plus team knows that there are going to be spammy and inappropriate comments left, and that there are also going to be comments people leave that you'll want to delete but won't want to necessarily report as abusive or spammy. Two different scenarios, right?

The problem is that the controls to edit your comment stream appear in one area but not another, and they're hidden unless you know where to look for them.

Let's dig in...

I posted a question to Google Plus about trips and weather, and the first [planted, Scott's not normally this abusive, just so you know] comment is rather troublesome:

The problem is that while this mini-window is great if you're in Gmail or otherwise using a different Google tool, you can't make any changes to the comment stream. What you can do as a handy shortcut, though, is scroll to the bottom of the mini-window:

Click on "View all mentions of my name" and you'll see the same post and comments, but in the main Window rather than just the mini-window:

Now things get interesting because if you move the cursor to the lower right side of the comment you don't like, some additional icons magically appear:

The flag icon lets you report a comment as abusive:

Once you've done that -- if appropriate -- then you can remove the comment from the discussion entirely (needless to say, they're two different things, to match the two scenarios mentioned earlier) by clicking on the "X" icon:

Click on the "X" and you'll be asked to confirm that's what you want to do:

Really want to delete it? Then click on "Delete". It won't notify the author that it's been deleted, but if they go back and review the discussion, they're obviously going to know that their comment has mysteriously vanished.

Finally, the feedback that Google+ shows you:

Once it's "crossed out" then you can be sure that the comment won't appear for anyone else and, if you reload the discussion, it'll vanish for you too.

Hope that helps you manage the discussion and mark as abusive all those annoying spammers!