Comments on: Using Comments on your Blog

By: Listorbit

Listorbit — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:00:05 +0000

I think all the big comments are here in your blog.

By: cellphone

cellphone — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:40:39 +0000

I can be happy here after reading the comments on any posts add insight and knowledge.
for that in search of information about the drop in cellphone yah

By: David Williams

David Williams — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:41:20 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with your summary Darren. My blog has only existed for a little over a week, but I’ve received a few comments and have responded to each one (same goes for emails). I have also developed a few email friendships via comments in other blogs. It’s a great way to develop a network of friends and colleagues.

Anchor Link :- http://www.iwaayconsultant.com

David Williams

By: Mar Matthias Darin

Mar Matthias Darin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:34:09 +0000

Hello,

Good post. I used a moderated method, but sometimes question
whether this is helpful or not…

By: Money Market Accounts

Money Market Accounts — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:58:09 +0000

Do you think you could outsource comment moderation? Is it too fine a line to have someone else moderate comments?

By: John Dilbeck

John Dilbeck — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 13:43:52 +0000

In my opinion, such as it is, I think a blog without comments isn’t really a blog.

I enjoy comments on what I write; otherwise it feels like standing on a mountain shouting into the wind.

Even so, I rarely get comments on what I write.

Sometimes I want to comment on a post I read on a blog, but can’t come up with anything meaningful to say that will add value to the post. Since I don’t want to say something like “that’s right” or “way to go,” I just don’t leave a comment.

The comments here at ProBlogger add value to what Darren writes and I find many of them to be worthwhile.

By: dsw

dsw — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:43:10 +0000

I also have recently removed nofollow tag from my blog to reward my members with backlinks. They actually particapte to increase content my site. If you have comment moderation on your website, then there is no need for nofollow.

By: un papier

un papier — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:29:07 +0000

Commenting should be enabled for all blogs. However I see that some of the people who have made it like CEOs and COOs (e.g., Jonathan Schwartz of sun) do not let us participate in the discussion. It then becomes just a marketing newsletter. Talking of Jonathan, I suspect if he even reviews his own piece.

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 16:06:39 +0000

A recent study showed that people who were new to blogs didn’t really understand what commenting was for or how it was supposed to work. They didn’t know if comments were to appear right away, be moderated, or what the purpose of them even was.

Default blog system templates and themes don’t do a good job of helping newbies. You need to put in your comment policy, explain what happens when the submit button is clicked, and actively encourage people to comment.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:48:11 +0000

I like comments. But, if it gets to a point where managing comments is extremely unwieldly, I won’t hesitate to consider disabling them. That said, I don’t see myself getting to that point for a real long time…

By: Damien

Damien — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:27:40 +0000

Comments are an integral part of my blog. I try to answer the questions posed as accurately as possible, but have been known to mess it up completely once or twice (not too often I’m glad to say) and you are right when you say that if something is inaccurate, a reader is guaranteed to set you right! I do try to respond to the comments if I can and if it is relevant. Sometimes I will just visit their own blog and reciprocate. How valuable are comments to me? 161 in the 42 day life of the blog says it all!

P.S. I’m enjoying the 31 days series, learning quite a bit.

By: HART

HART — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 10:03:13 +0000

I use Wordpress and added a plug-in called Spam Killer. I not really sure if it has worked, or never needed to work. I think the biggest problem in comment spam is the blogger.com help files and BizStone (of Xanga)’s article http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1060&query=promote&topic=0&type=f that encourages people to post random comments – to promote their blogs.

I personally don’t care and welcome anonymous comments. I would rather find something offensive and delete it, than have someone trying to post a legitimate comment and get frustrated and never come back because he/she has to register.

Occassionally, I get a chuckle from surfing seeing comments like “GO” http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11746750&postID=112335830226103907 (in response to receiving a generic comment by this person) … although I laugh even more when you see comments by people like “ERIC” .. with his http://playstation3eric.blogspot.com blog … I just had to bookmark that. Can you say …. ‘overboard’ ?

By: IO ERROR

IO ERROR — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 05:19:34 +0000

@markus: You’re quite welcome. My ultimate goal is a complete elimination of comment spam, while keeping the comments, and not unduly bothering the blog author.

@duncan: Yes, /. has comments, but they also have an elaborate comment moderation system which is mainly reader-driven. You don’t frequently see CowboyNeal and CmdrTaco responding in comments, for instance.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 01:09:32 +0000

Wow – lots of comments on this one – surprise surprise.

I probably should have written something in this post about the cost involved in having comments from a time perspective.

To be honest – whilst I love the comments sections of my blogs – they do significantly increase the amount of time and energy I have to put into my blogging. Not only from a spam point of view (despite spam filters I find there are a few that always get through) but also from a perspective of interacting with people – responding to questions – building relationships – mediating fights between commenters.

I wouldn’t give them up on a blog like ProBlogger for anything in the world – however I’ll admit to being tempted to turning comments off on a few of my other blogs where they are a less integral part of the blog.

By: Chris @ Deliberate Chaos

Chris @ Deliberate Chaos — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 01:00:34 +0000

Another tconsideration is to decide if you will allow anonymous comments.

I find I can get more comments if I allow anonymous comments. I personally don’t want to sign up for a bunch of different blogging services so that I can post. I’m sure that others feel the same way.

I take a risk with anonymous comments, but I can delete anything that isn’t in the spirit of blogging, i.e. spam or obscenity. I haven’t had any problems with anonymous comments so far, but I assume that one of these days I’ll have to delete a comment or two.

I also have comments sent to my email address — it helps make it easy to send an email to an author of a comment, if needed.

The best way to build a community is to find a couple of blogs that interest you and post often on them. It’s easy to just surf using blogexplosion or blogadvance, but it’s important to take a minute or two to contribute.

By: Lei

Lei — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 00:49:25 +0000

I love to receive and give comments. I answer every single one of my comments with some type of meaningful acknowledgement besides a simple emoticon, but I have heard a couple people complain that they don’t like to get a response?! That makes no sense to me because I usually don’t visit a blog again if I don’t get some response from someone to my comment because I feel excluded and ignored.

By: duncan

duncan — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 00:09:19 +0000

Advice to new bloggers: if you don’t offer comments chances are you’re not going to make it. Sure, some of the bigger sites dont but they’ve got the traffic to do so, and I don’t think it really helps them much at all by not having comments. Remember that the biggest site of all does (slashdot)

By: markus

markus — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:21:39 +0000

@IO ERROR: Great work. I don’t get any spam comment. (I just receive a few at all..)

@Darren: Thank’s! You started answering my question :)

By: Paul O Mahony

Paul O Mahony — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 21:38:10 +0000

Just wondering myself about the virtues of collaboration through comments. I will be putting forward a proposal to use Blogs as a content management system within our company.
One of my arguements is that allowing comments on internal company blogs will foster discussion and collaboration. I know it seems to work well on this blog, but the audience here is probably more receptive to this type of collaboration then your average joe soap who works in a company. I don’t know if anybody has any thoughts on this?

By: IO ERROR

IO ERROR — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 20:22:56 +0000

And now I'm going to troll for hits. On comment spam: I've been working on this for quite a while, and I'm preparing a new release of Bad Behavior for WordPress which testers have reported has just about completely eliminated comment spam - and those spam digest emails. @Brian Turner: I wrote an article on nofollow and what it really does to the web a couple of months ago, and it received some of the highest numbers of comments and trackbacks I've seen on my site. The abstract: Nofollow is useless at stopping comment spam; it's however very useful at solving some unrelated problems that Google has been having for quite a while. It's too bad that ProBlogger uses nofollow. Oh well.