6 Reasons Why I Whacked Your Comment
I Am So On To You!
I deleted a bunch of comments recently on this blog plus on several other blogs that I manage. It seems that some people are under the impression that whatever they write will automatically be approved by me.
Oh, they were wrong — so very wrong!
Without going through all of the guidelines for leaving a comment that will get approved, let me assure you that the following types of comments are always summarily rejected:
- You thought that my readers would be interested in Percocet, Xanax, Vicodin, and a host of other drugs. Maybe so, but please take your spamfest elsewhere.
- Your comment was actually spot on, but you got greedy and left two links — one link was in the body of your response, while the other was found in your screen name. All right, I’m very generous with link love, but my limit is one per comment. No adult sites!
- You left the usual –I didn’t understand everything you had to say, but thanks for sharing — non-comment, therefore I deleted what you had to say and urge you to come up with an original line next time.
- The third, seventh, eleventh and seventeenth comments were left by you, but you changed your name and links just to get some juicy back links. Sorry, but your I.P. address was the same each time, an easy tactic to uncover. Besides, real responses rule!
- You managed to find comments open on an older article that recently achieved a ranking of PR3. Trouble is, you changed the subject of the conversation to suit your own purposes. Otherwise, I would have approved what you wrote…doh!
- The conversation was going fine until you decided to hijack the thread. Where are your manners? Stay focused and remember that the internet isn’t about me, me, me! Or should I have said, “You, you, you!?”
Over 90% of the comments left on my blogs are approved and I even go through my Akismet list and pull out those comments which shouldn’t have been flagged.
Am I a comment control freak? You betcha! But, if you use your smarts then you’ll find that I will approve what you have to say, allowing you to get some ranked or unranked link love in the process.
Just don’t tick off the clown — he ain’t wearing no smiley face!
Hi Matt,
I’m a recent reader and first-time commenter. Kudos for spelling out the rule of engagement. I read a number of blogs. On many, I’ve stopped reading the comments. Too much noise and nonsense. The signal gets lost in the tumult.
In a few of your posts, I’ve actually skipped over the comments that weren’t written by you (going back only to understand the question that prompted your response).
Cutting the nonsense is a great way to encourage readers to actually read and participate in a constructive manner. Nice going.
I’m pretty liberal in approving comments, but I’m getting tired of keywords instead of people leaving comments! And I agree with the other issues you address.
Damon: I’m not as likely to read comments either if the conversation gets sidetracked. When I see it happening on this blog, I bring out the whackadoodle and away she goes. Thank you for your kind comments too.
Lillie:This whole keyword optimization is killing conversation. It is okay to employ SEO techniques, but that is what a hyperlinked screen name is for.
You bring out the good in blogging Matt, get back to what its all about and that is having good conversation with people and exchanging ideas via internet. Crazy looking clown picture too it kinda freaked me out a little. Hope this gets posted and have a good day….
Kevin, the clown isn’t just ugly he has an evil grin. I wasn’t keen on the photograph, but it does get my point across somewhat.
You are correct: conversing and exchanging ideas is what benefits everyone, something a blogger can help bring about or quench.
important point to people who comment on blogs for selfish reasons.
Hey, Matt!
I Googled you yesterday to find out whatever happened to “The Article Writer” - and here you are, alive and well. Great blog.
This post of yours is pretty timely. Got any advice to offer for the new Wordpress blogger who’s being link hijacked?? Is deleting a spam comment enough… or have they somehow leached onto the blog via some mystery within the code?
Any advice you have is much appreciated.
Dina from Wordfeeder.com
There is absolutely nothing wrong with people using anchor text for their name as long as they leave valid comments. I approve real comments no matter what the name on my main blog all the time. Why would I want to delete something that is adding fresh content to my blog as long as it is legit? And why would I care whether they leave a name like “Frank” or “Grocery Stores”?
Dina: Wow, a voice from the past! Good to hear from you, Dina. I’ll stop by Wordfeeder real soon. As far as your newbie WP friend, as long as this person approves links before they appear live, then they won’t have any problem with the site. Sure, the embedded link with the commenter’s name could be a problem, but I would let go. Any other links can be removed if the comments end up being a link farm.
AT&T: I’m very generous when it comes to linking out if you leave a comment. However, I do want comments to stay on the subject and I can tell when a comment adds little or no value to the thread. Those I dump.
Matt,
I must tell you, the design of your main website pleases my eye.
Thanks for the comment link advice. I always just figured that pre-screening and deleting would suffice. But then I heard a harrowing tale about a well-known site that was hijacked by spammer creeps via some malicious code that was placed in the main index file.
I wasn’t sure if spam comments could be considered a means of breaking in. But it sounds like deleting is sufficient.
Thanks again!
Dina, a hacker can still infiltrate a website, but it isn’t likely to come through a blog posting, rather through the means you mentioned.
Keeping one’s WP version up to date can help out as well as having a recent backup copy handy in the event that it is hacked.
I was waiting to see why that clown picture was in there - had to wait until the last line though to find out
Its always the same with dofollow blogs - I have changed my comment procedure so many times to suit. First, I closed comments on posts over 8 weeks old, Then i just started to nuke everything that askimet caught without checking - it got that bad. Finally, I just ripped out dofollow.
Wow! I haven’t really thought about shutting the door on do follow. Then again, I can see where that might be necessary especially if the phentermine-heparin-nasacort alliance strikes a fatal blow.
For the record, I don’t close comments on this blog automatically. I will, however, manually close comments which seem to draw a little too much of the wrong kinds of activity.
I also comment for doFollow links here but I allways try to make some contribution.
Along with that I support the blogs autors’ moves towards restricting comment policy.
I think the proposal of automatic-closing the comments at old threads is very reasonable (and the delay should depend on blog popularity - somewhere it could be less then 8 weeks).
And here is why: most of the people who comment for a do Follow link find the pages not via the site navigation but by google/PR check or smth.other. And as we know, the PR on old pages becomes heigh with time, so the amount of old blog posts that become potential spam victims will only increase.
2 Paul
Closing doFollow? Isn’t it mean? I can compare it to proclaiming the whip-round for charity and then appropriating funds to yourself.
It seems to me like everything you said should be fairly common sense. If you don’t participate in the *discussion* you don’t have a right to be hurt that your comment wasn’t approved (I often delete lame comments, even if they aren’t link spam). Do those phentermine-pushers even come back to check if their comments made it up? I’m guessing not - so don’t worry about justifying your actions to them.
I think the fact that you don’t use nofollow is really cool. Although it may end up being more work for you that way, it bespeaks of a certain amount of engagement that I sometimes feel is missing from people who rely on nofollow to thwart comment spam.
Melanie, I don’t know if the drug pushers even visit my site. I think they may use a bot to find open blogs and automatically attempt publishing to them.
I’m keeping this blog Do Follow because I want people to comment and, if they leave something of value, to reap the benefit of the discussion. This includes the eventual ranking of a page, as many of my articles eventually do get ranked by Google.
Matt, did you mean *do* follow?
And just curious: why do you use JavaScript onclick tracking? Do you find the data useful?
Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks.
Thanks for pointing out the error, Melanie. I corrected it.
I use the javascript stats from MyBlogLog as a supplement to Google Analytics to get real time reports on blog traffic. It works quite well for me and I will sometimes compare the two.
Thank you again!
Matt,
Commented on several posts, then follow this post… Guess I did alright so far, can see that all my comments still around
Anyway, agreed with all of your points. Spot on, guess I can use as reference for my comment policy… Thanks.
Asai’h — you got it right. I just changed my comment policy to allow regular commentators to see their comments right away. No approval is needed by me. Therefore, when you post here — you’ll get instant link love!
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.