Have you ever thought that something which you took for granted another person may consider to be of great value? It came to me the other day when I was going through some comments that perhaps there are people out there who are not quite sure how to moderate their comments. How exactly do you decide which comments are deleted or spammed and which ones are good enough to keep? After some thought I decided there would be enough people out there who would be interested in the criteria I use to moderate my comments to warrant me writing a post about it.
Those of you who are regulars know that any comment you leave gets published immediately, as I don’t believe in letting them go to moderation to be approved or denied at a later date. I do this to reward my commentators and because it doesn’t take me that long to delete unworthy comments, especially as most of the hard work has been done by the GASP and Akismet plugins.
Good Comments VS Bad Comments
In Akismet Hell
Some time ago I wrote a post called Teaching People The Proper Way To Comment and reading that post is your first step on your quest for better comments. I pretty well let all comments through on that post giving them a grade out of ten with a short description of why they got that grade. Don’t worry, even though I accepted all comments I removed the links from comments I would normally have deleted. What I found to be a real hoot was the comments left by people who obviously didn’t read the post. Too bad for them and they probably never knew their score because they never had any intention of coming back, which is why you should delete their comments.
Now that you know how to tell the difference between a good comment and a bad comment you’re ready to learn how I determine which comments survive and which ones get deleted or even worse get sent to spam hell!
Not Following The Comment Policy
My Comment Policy is the first step I use to decide which comment gets the chop and which one is accepted. People who haven’t bothered to read it and make stupid mistakes like using a keyword instead of a name definitely get the chop. If it is a really good comment, one that adds value to the post, I’ll remove the keywords. There’s no point letting a good comment go to waste now is there?
Not Reading The Post
Way too many commentators think they can leave a comment without reading the post. They seem to think they can get a feeling for the post just by reading the heading and maybe even the first couple of sentences. Too bad they usually get it wrong and their comments have nothing to do with the post and so it get’s deleted.
Including Unrelated Links
If it isn’t enough that I have a dofollow blog and reward commentators with both commentluv and keywordluv plugins, there are still morons out there who insist on placing a link in their comment. I wouldn’t mind if the link led to a site that was related to the post itself but they usually have nothing to do with it and simply links to some unrelated site. These comments are sent straight to spam.
Not Enough Content
Commentators are getting pretty smart these days because they know what happens to comments such as ‘Good post’ and so they try to beat the system by leaving simple sentences that add nothing at all to the post, something like this one that I’ve just deleted; “Hey! It seems to be one of the impressive stuff you have shared with us.” Yeah, as if they think inane compliments would guarantee their comment. Nope, I love kicking these comments to the curb.
That’s it! Now you know how I work out which comments I keep, which ones I delete and which ones I send to spam. There is a very good reason why I am so strict with the quality of comments I accept on my blog and why you should be just as stringent with the ones on yours. The last thing a person wants to see after reading a great post is a whole lot of crappy comments. Seeing this tells them that the blogger doesn’t really care much about his blog. I don’t want to give them that impression about my blogs.
Do you follow the same criteria I do? Perhaps you do things differently and if so you would like to share your moderation technique with us.
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I’ve had my comment policy running for sometime on my blog now and I still get those blatant spammers stopping by trying to abuse the system. I do think that a lot of the time they see CommentLuv and Keyword Love and just drop any old rubbish to try and get a comment posted up! But at the end of the day their comments are removed anyway, so what’s the point ;)
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Twitter: AussieSire
Unfortunately they fail to see point that their comment is wasted on our blogs Karen. The problem is that not all bloggers are as dedicated as we are about accepting only quality comments. If they were these spammers would have to change their ways.
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The one thing that I should create is a comment policy. I do get many comments where people use keywords, and the comments are valid, but without a policy, I tend to keep the comments as they are.
Many times if I suspect a spam comment, but it does look legit, I do a quick search in Google. If it is a spam comment it will usually show up in the search results on many other blogs. I quickly delete such a comment.
I’ll need to create a comment policy to let people know my commenting rules, so I won’t feel bad about removing keywords from the commentors name.
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Paul, a comment policy is a good idea and there are a lot of people who actually do read it. In fact I do believe that my comment policy is the most read post on this blog. :king_tb:
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Do I use the same criteria? Yes, pretty much. As you say, some of them are getting pretty clever by skimming the post to get the gist, then coming up with a sentence of two that are complimentary but not especially meaningful.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of comments from people promoting coupon sites. That irks me, but if they leave a legitimate comment, I have to let it in. Some of these have been repeat commenters, whether the return because they like my content or because I let them comment/link I don’t know. But I guess everyone is promoting something these days…
Twitter: AussieSire
I get a few from coupon sites as well Allan but as long as they leave a good comment I let them slide.
Of course they like your post Allan, you write great stuff and as long as their comment is related to your content it’s a good indication that they are reading it. Can’t ask for more than that, except maybe that an ad caught their eye and they clicked on it.
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Keep up the amazing work!! I love how you wrote this and I also like the colors here on this site. Very good opinions expressed here.
Now just hold off pressing that “send to spam” button just yet Sire because I do have something useful to say.
Now the first sentence of this comment is actually from my own blog’s spam section and something I put there when I checked my comments section earlier today.
I now use exactly the same method as you do. I allow all comments as a default setting to be fair to those genuine people who visit my blog and deserve to have their comments appear immediately.
I use a spam filter to automatically kill the worst of the worst and I manually remove the rubbish like the “keep up the amazing work!!” nonsense I get from time to time.
Kind regards Sire,
Patrick.
P.S. I actually to like the colors on your site. ;)
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I have to admit you had me going when I started reading your comment Patrick, it just wasn’t you.
I dream of the day when all bloggers allow comments as their default setting, because as you know as long as you have a decent spam filter it’s not really necessary.
Glad you like the colors :tongue_rolleye_ee:
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I follow the same basic method as you. But for some of my blogs, I do allow keywords as long as the comment is worthy of inclusion. I often times check the website, if they look like a bad neighbor I will delete the comment regardless of anything else. I think all of my blog commenters would appreciate that. Who wants to have their link next to a spammer?
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John, I use keyworluv so they have an opportunity to leave keywords and their name but some don’t take it and just use the keyword.
Checking to see their link doesn’t lead to a bad neighbour is a great idea.
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Hi Peter
Not enough content eh… I’d better get writing then.
I hate those generic comments such as “Love this post, have tweeted it already” – they send me barmy.
A good comment should contribute to the discussion by adding a few of your own thoughts.
For instance, it’s tempting to let anything through when you are starting out and are desperate for comments. Don’t do it.
If it doesn’t add to the discussion… kick it into touch.
If you do feel bad, don’t spam it, just delete it.
How is that Peter – enough content? LOL
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It’s almost as if they feel that by leaving a complimentary comment along with the ruse that they tweeted the post we would be happy to let their comment alone. I’m sure a lot of bloggers would but it won’t work here and it obviously won’t work on your blog.
Yep, that’s heaps of content Keith, you pass mate.
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Dang Sire, you approve them all and then come back to them to look them over later! You know for the longest time I approved all of them until I realized what a dummy I’ve been. I now have it set to where they have to have left some comments previously before they go straight through. To be honest with you, I still get some spammy comments that make it through both my plug-ins like the ones you mentioned in the “Not Enough Content” section. I just don’t want to come back after the fact and clean all of those up.
Other than that, I pretty much follow the same policies as you do. I mean come on people, are you that desperate for comments that you think everyone is going to let those crappy ones slip through! I guess we’ll never get rid of those, will we.
Thanks Sire..
Adrienne
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Adrienne, most of the comments that make it past the spam filters are pretty good which is why I don’t bother moderating them. It doesn’t take long to delete or spam those few that I consider too crappy to leave on my blogs.
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I consider myself a regular, and, as far as I’m aware at least, my comments are still moderated. Explanation please? ;)
I’m lucky to get one comment on my blog every month or so, so it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort for me to decide which comments to publish and which to delete. You make a lot of valid points in this post, though. I think it’s true, too, that a lot of people judge the quality of a blog by the quality of the comments that the blogger allows to be published on his blog. Yours is one of the “cleanest” (in that sense, at least ;) ) that I read.
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For some reason Petra your comments sometimes gets picked on by Akismet. I don’t know why because you always leave great comments. Don’t worry though, I do my bit as your knight in shining armour and I always rescue it from that hungry dragon :king_tb:
I couldn’t ask for better praise than that.
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…and I hope you know how much I appreciate that :) After all, what would a damsel in distress like myself do without her knight in shining armor to come to her rescue? ;)
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Hi Sire,
I now officially declare you the comment king of the blogosphere! Wherever I go, you are there talking about comments :)
You really know a lot about blog comments and you walk the walk. I remember that I discovered you from other blogs due to the quality of comments you always leave there and when I came to your blog, I saw a dedicated blogger who is open about his love for comments and takes time to reply all the comments from his visitors.
As you well know, I have only static websites so I don’t have any comments to moderate but I am sure that some blogs that I comment on including those of some experienced bloggers will benefit from this advice on moderating comments. I don’t have any experience on spam comments but I can still pick out spam comments that some blog owners leave on their blogs. Some are so bad that it is better to have no comments at all than those. Once, a spammer actually copied part of the comment I left on a blog and posted it as his own yet it was published.
If I start blogging I will definitely follow your comment moderation techniques!
BTW I had so much fun reading the post on “Teaching people the proper way to comment”. I was laughing my head off and I love the way you were grading the comments, up to deducting points for spelling error! :) It reminds me of the way teachers graded our work in primary school. You would have made a great teacher, you know? :) You pay attention to detail and that’s one of the qualities of a good teacher.
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Me, comment king? You know flow I’ve actually use Comment King as my keywords for those bloggers who use keywordluv, but more for fun than anything else. :cheese1_ee:
As for being a teacher, I was one semester shy of being qualified and only gave up because I didn’t enjoy it and I didn’t want to do it just for the perks.
I’ve been prone to the odd spelling mistake and I have always regretted not taking the time to proofread my comment. I used that as part of my grading criteria because I want everyone who reads that post to be the best commentator that they can possibly be.
Sure am glad you enjoyed that post.
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My personal favorite is the completely unrelated comment that revolves around the link contained it in. That, or comments in foreign languages with a dozen or more links crammed in. Quality of comments gets into a grey area. I won’t censor any comment unless it violates my comment policy in some way.
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Hey Charles, I’m quite happy to cross that grey area. I’ve even gone so far to visit the bloggers site to see how good his content is. If the comment on my blog is significantly lower then he is either not prepared to put the same effort in his comments or he’s hired someone else to comment on his behalf and they’re not doing a good job. If that’s the case, then I’m doing him a favour by deleting it.
Only the first comments are moderated on my site. Once their first comments are approved, their next ones are no longer moderated. But of course, I do check each new comment that comes up.
One of my criteria is to see if the comment is so generic (regardless if it consists of 2 words or 300 words) that it can be used to comment on any blog and any post. If so, it goes straight to the trash.
And nowadays, I tend to not approve new commenters who don’t at least have a person’s name before their keyword. I mean, I hate to respond to someone like so… ‘Thank you No-Credit-Checking-Credit-Card for dropping by my blog…’. He should have used, say, ‘Sam @ No Credit Checking Credit Card’ as his username.
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It’s a good thing that everyone knows me as Sire James, but then again Sire isn’t really a keyword
It’s great that you monitor the quality of the comments left on your blog as it improves the overall quality of the blog itself.
Hi Sire,
I only have one guy that comes by my blog and leaves a “great post” with a couple of words added to it.
For the most part I have a great community building on my blog and they always leave well thought out answers.
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Hi Justin,
I’m assuming you delete his comments, and that being the case I am surprised that he doesn’t change his tactics by trying to leave a good comment.
Its hard to decide wether a comment is good, or spam. I usually take 1 day per week to see all my comments, and also look in the spam database. Some people do much effort to write a good comment, and then get spammed. Thats not the way to be honest. Never the less, thank you for this post!
Twitter: AussieSire
Actually reena, once you’ve established a criteria for judging whether to delete a comment or not it’s really quite easy
Akismet usually catch most spam comments. But as you said, commentators are getting smart these days by trying to overpass it. I usually smell spam comments from a mile distance. In some cases i see comments of people who doesn’t know much about the industry and which they seem spamy to many moderators, but i approve them if i know that this person is honestly trying to learn not spam. Spamers these days know exactly that there comments will be accepted only on auto approved blogs, because most bloggers can figure out spamy comments these days.
One thing i need to add, is that some bloggers doesn’t approve your comments even if they are great, informative and helpful. I think that they approve only the comments of their inner circle which is not great by the way for expanding their readers and customer’s circle.
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You are right Edgar, approving comments only from those within your niche is not the right way to handle things and may be counterproductive over the long term.
I think it was the day before that I cleaned up 230 pending comments in my blog. I pretty much ignored it for the past few days because I was pretty lazy. But when I dealt with it, seems really easy…because most of them are SPAM. Good thing there’s that “bulk action”.lol
Twitter: AussieSire
I’ve found it’s easier not to let it get away from you by keeping on top of it.
I have a regular blog related to a sport, and sometimes I get the most ridiculous comments! I think one comment asked to find buddies through his carpet cleaning website, with link in comment. I like to comment on blogs for SEO, so I don’t mark people as spam (unless they are promoting porn or something not kosher). I just won’t let the really bad ones through. If someone puts some effort into it, though, I’ll let them link to their unrelated site.
Twitter: AussieSire
Well you’re a better man than I John. As far as I’m concerned they should be happy with the link in their url and the commentluv link. :smile2_ee:
I have become so fed up with spammers that I retooled a WordPress plugin that kicks out an email listing out reasons that their comment wasn’t approved.
It seems to be working out pretty well. I can see the spam tapering a bit and quality seems to be picking up.
Here. Download a free copy for your self…on the house.
http://thebitbot.com/files/comment-disapproved-notifier.zip
Mark
Twitter: AussieSire
Hey Mark, I’m sure there will be some who will avail themselves of your plugin. Heck, I may even have a look at it myself
Help yourself. Simply upload and activate it and then leave a spam comment on your blog and then click the “spam” button and check your inbox.
Mark
I agree with the point “Not reading the post”. This lead to unrelated comments and eventually comments like “your post is really helpful” and other similar to that definitely will come out.
This is what I’ve been battling for the past weeks, filtering my comments and most them are comments saying that my post is really helpful, even though I posted just a character :)
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Yeah, what’s with these people, do they really think we’re not aware of what they are doing?
I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, but I always, always, always manually approve every comment. Otherwise, I get a crapload of spam. It seems like it would be easier to manually approve every comment, since you are reading them anyway. Spam filters or not, I think it’s easier to run through the comments in the morning or afternoon rather than having to delete something that might have been replied to later.
Here’s a sampling of the comments I trashed just this week “Looks very nice. Thanks for posting it” or “Ya learn something new eevryday. It’s true I guess!” (note the spelling error) or my favorite, which I get at least 7 or 8 times a week “There is a critical shotrage of informative articles like this.” That must be a comment that’s sure to get by the spam filter. I would assume that most of these are coming from scrapebox or some other auto-commenting tool.
I don’t have a strict comment policy yet, as my blog is really new, and has a ultra-low PR. Now, in a few years or months, when the traffic gets higher, yeah, I’ll crack down with a no-nonsense comment policy. But, as you so kindly pointed out, a LOT of people are too lazy to read it anyway.
Twitter: AussieSire
Hey Jeff, even though comments on this blog don’t go into moderation I still manually moderated every single comment at least once a day deleting or spamming those that are not worthy of being published. This isn’t as big a task as some would make it out to be because of the plugins I use to fight spam.
As to the comment policy, it’s the most popular post viewed on this blog.
Sire, you know that you and I have similar thoughts on comments. The ones where I know people aren’t paying attention are those posts griping, in my way of course, on how people leave bad comments and then I get a comment along the lines of “Yes, leaving good comments is important to good blogging.” I mean, what the heck is that? Yup, it gets booted off quickly.
And you and I also agree on moderation, although I’m now hearing about all these people who seemingly moderate the first comment and once it’s approved they never moderate any more. I never even knew that existed, although I’m still not going to search for it to turn it on. I don’t want all those extra messages telling me to moderate comments; ugh! :shock_ee:
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I’ve had to deal with a few of those on this post. Makes you wonder what the hell these people are thinking, or if they actually know how to think at all.
Yep, it’s part of WP’s core and I used to do that when I first started, but that was before Akismet.
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How funny; I wonder how I missed it, not that I’d have used it anyway. And now I’m wondering why CommentLuv isn’t working for me; stuff’s always picking on me! :furious_tb:
You are very strict. Well, I respect if you moderate your comment. It is your blog after all, right? I have a blog before and I do not change my setting when it comes to comments. One day, I was flooded by spammers, hundreds of links where posted. It really did annoy me and I already did block their website. But for me, even they would use the name as a keyword as their name but the content is valuable. I would just allow it. But as I’ve said, it’s your blog it’s your rules. But I’ll take of this notes on checking the content of the comments.
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m not that strict Kymillia. I have a policy and if people are too lazy to read or adhere to it then they don’t deserve to have their comment approved.
There are some people who just leave comments with their links in their comments, I just delete those types of comments.
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Those comments I would spam!
I always thought that the majority of ‘great article’ type spam is just created by bots or by hard-up people who don’t know any better (or can’t get any better work, though who the hell actually pays them is anyone’s guess) rather than real commenters. So I just waste ‘em if I see ‘em. Akismet has, so far, caught most of them. I’m more concerned with my own comment policy, with people who are taking the piss and not respecting me as an individual. I’ll see if I can get commentluv to attach the post I did recently about my new comment policy… or rather, my re-written one, in humorous style.
You know that I moderate before comments go through, we’ve been there, so no need to go through it again, but other than that I’m with you on most of your points. Keywords – hate ‘em, won’t let ‘em through. Contentless comments, ditto. Out of context comments, also, get send to Akismet hell. (Do we know if they actually find it hellish there? They might enjoy it!)
Other bugbears of mine that you’ve not mentioned (so I don’t know how you feel about them) are extremely long comments, so long that one has to scroll the equivalent of more than a page to see anyone else’s. And particularly long ones with no paragraphing, no punctuation and only small letters… they drive me crazy and make my ‘delete key’ finger very itchy!
Twitter: AussieSire
Hey Val, I don’t get many long comments but if I did I would make use of a plugin that limited the length of the comments so that they would have to edit it before it was accepted.
Unfortunately they would have no conception of Akismet hell until more people placed them there and then they would never, ever see their comments again
Checked out your chat with Mrs Icy, quite amusing
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I would say the comment policy is the minimum if you want to avoid getting emails from people complaining that their comment didn’t get published. That way you can simply point them to it and say “try again”.
The other “clever” thing I noticed spammers doing was simply copying bits of other comments – or even complete ones – that had gone through. This is really hard to identify and keep track of when you have 20+ comments on your posts. Interestingly the visitor that was doing this kept using the same email address, so I was able to track down all the comments they had left on the blog I sometimes moderate.
Twitter: AussieSire
Hi Tim, I’ve caught people copying parts of comments before as well and I spam those comments rather than delete them because I really hate it when they do that.
There are alot of people who dont read the post they just comment leaving any old standed comment, I know alot of people just use there blogs for spam to make it look active.
Twitter: AussieSire
I don’t think that is true Sam, they leave it because they don’t know any better and have yet to learn the difference between good and bad comments. No-one with any sense would leave crappy comments as it brings the whole post down.
Hi Sire,
I believe your criteria for moderating comments is reasonable, easy to understand and to follow. In fact, it’s similar to what other thoughtful bloggers implement on their blogs.
I agree with the point you made about readers getting the wrong impression about a blog due to crappy comments. It has happened to me several times wherein I liked the posts but had second thoughts of leaving a comment. I felt that I did not want to be associated with bad comments since I always try to leave a relevant one.
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Twitter: AussieSire
Hi Theresa,
I look at it like this, a person who does not clean out the rubbish comments is the same as someone who does not take out the trash, in time his house will be so full of rubbish that is all that you will see.
I guess the criteria is reasonable knowing that there are people who just write one liners or just few phrases just to get backlinks. We should all know that making contribution on the conversation would not only build us links but would make us gain more good business relationships with other online buffs here.
Twitter: AussieSire
That’s right Tina, there are many benefits from writing quality comments.
I think you have a very fair moderation policy, reading the post and offering an insight isn’t that much to ask. I often find it interesting to look at the links of commentators. The ones that confuse me are the blatant spam comments that give their link as one of the search engines.
Twitter: AussieSire
Hopefully you won’t see too many of those links on this blog Dave.
It seems like you are really angry with spammers, I saw at least 3 posts of yours that charge against de spammers and their commenting methods XD.
But I understand you, you give dofollow links to the home and to the last post of the person who comments, so that person should think: “let’s try at least to do a comment with a little bit of valuable content relative to the topic of the post”.
Twitter: AussieSire
Not at all, I hardly have to deal with spam because all the hard work is done by the plugins. The few that slip through are easily dealt with.
The problem is, if Joe – the salaryman – comes to your blog through some random link and like the article, he won’t look for your comment policy before leaving a comment. He won’t even know a comment policy exists. So there are high chances you’ll drive away real and honest commentators like that.
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Twitter: AussieSire
I can’t see how it will drive them away if they don’t know it exists because as far as they are concerned it doesn’t and so the will comment regardless. The problem is whether or not their comment conforms with the policy.
The only one the comment policy will drive away is those who don’t want to take the time to write a good comment and quite frankly if thats the case I rather they would’t
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I get tons of comments with no added value these days. Most of these will get filtered out and the commenters won’t come back.
However, I’ve found tons of feedback from the unrelated comments recently, and I was a bit surprised by that. It has really helped me to shape my writing style and type of content that I post.
I haven’t found a comment with a link included in a post for a while now, a bit surprised by that. Maybe the spammers haven’t found my blogs yet.
Twitter: AussieSire
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by that Niko, how do you get feedback from unrelated comments?
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Spammers are figuring out that short comments are not going to pass so I’m seeing more long comments that really don’t mean anything and it is sometime hard to read those long comments just to check out if that comment actually has anything to do with the blog post.
I also find it sad that people don’t leave good and long comments to blogs with dofollow links. If you really want to have that link then you should rexpect the blog owner so that the blog gets a good comment that has enough words and something valuable to add to the conversation.
Glad that you have strict comment policy so that we real commentors get that extra link from your blog and we know that your blog isn’t going to fill up with shady links and comments.
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You know Mary, spammers are like liars, sooner or later they will get caught.
As for you fail to leave quality comments, they may get a link back to their site but they are not doing their reputation any good.
There many people who just write spam comments or even they write pure advertising messages on my blog and of course I delete all these comments. It’s just waste of time to write spam comments since most bloggers delete these comments. But it is very annoying for me to waste my time, by reading and deleting these comments, thanks god there are plugins like akismet but even these plugins are not 100% correct so I have to read all the comments
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I know it’s a pain Kostas, but its much better to take the time to delete those comments as your blog will look that much more professional without all the spam comments. A lot of the comments that I delete other bloggers leave them be and their blogs are worse off because of it.
Yeah while I think Akismet does a great job of controlling spam comments, it is important to weed out comments that people leave just to gather backlinks. In fact I regularly mark a comment as spam if it doesn’t add to the conversation in my post.
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Twitter: AussieSire
I do the very same thing.
The spammers’ aim is not to redirect some of your traffic to their site, which is the obvious initial conclusion; it is to increase their (or their clients’) ranking in search engines. Most search engines now count in a site’s ranking how many other Websites have linked to it. By leaving comments on your site, the spammers’ sites can achieve a slightly higher search engine ranking.
The spammers’ job is to get around spam-blockers and target the security of individual Websites; though occasionally they do so on a manual basis, by far the most common forms of comment spam are achieved with spam “bots” or scripts.
Twitter: AussieSire
Hey Jasmine, I think everyone knows that the only thing spammers have in mind when leaving a comment is to get the backlinks. I doubt very much anyone would follow a spammers comment to their site because in my experience there is no value in that comment. If anything they would avoid their site.
One of the thing I don’t like in moderating comments is that when you received hundreds of comments a day and you have to check it one by one in case there is a genuine comment that you don’t want to delete.
Twitter: AussieSire
And do you receive hundreds of comments a day Sheri?
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I agreed…. If visitors see spam comments, they may think that you’re not responsible blogger and don’t care what your visitors thinks and what they want to share with you. We should really moderate comments to our blogs. Even in my personal, non-profit blog, I still prefer to moderate comments because spam comments are really ugly, nonsense, and out of topic most of the time.
Thanks!!
Twitter: AussieSire
That’s right Shilipa and hopefully this post will help them tell the spam comments from the real ones.
Sire recently posted…CommentLuv Premium Adding To Revenue Stream
I have encountered a blog with really good posts but when I’ve decided to leave my comment, it annoys me to see that the commenters are just promoting something with links in their comments and not even mentioning anything about the topic! urggh How’s that? I think the blog owner doesn’t even care. His blog looks like a dwelling place of spammers.
Twitter: AussieSire
That’s true Linda, blogger who don’t moderate their comments properly aren’t doing themselves any favors.
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For most of my blogs, I use pretty much use your same policy. I have to admit though most of my blogs are nofollow.
I think I am going to rethink this though. I just added the commentluv plugin to one of my blogs yesterday and I am going to make that one dofollow as a test. Hopefully I don’t get scrapeboxed to death.
As far as your comment “there are still morons out there who insist on placing a link in their comment” that just seems a bit greedy. Being that you have the commentluv and keywordluv plugins active, they deserve to get their comments deleted, lol.
Jessica
Twitter: AussieSire
Yep, and I take great satisfaction in deleting their comments.
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I hate when people put keywords in their name field. And its really a burn when you have a wordpress blog and you get hundreds of scrapebox comments submitted each week.
There needs to be a software that pools all the comment from all your websites into one easy to manage dashboard.
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Twitter: AussieSire
Usually people who do that leave spam comments Thomas and there is a plugin that will deal wit that is akismet.
It’s a good thing to know that even commentators didn’t follow some of your comment policy rules, you still give them consideration. I know some who totally put good comments to their garbage bin if the comment doesn’t qualify to their basic commenting rules. Anyway, what else us commentators can ask for? You’re offering commentluv plugins to address our needs. Thanks for that!
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Twitter: AussieSire
I try to give everyone the benefit of a doubt if I can see they’re trying Maria but not everyone does and those I delete or spam.
Yeah! For sure, most of your commentators really like you. You’re one of those bloggers who are really approachable, friendly and of course a reliable blogger (shares lots of useful info) to all your readers.
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I can see that your criteria for a good comment are very good, because I don’t see any comments that I know are actually spam. But I do see them on almost all other good and popular blogs I read.
I understand you have a commenting policy and I understand your criteria. But I personally think that anyone with a grain of common sense can think of what would be seen as spam.
Spammers know they are spamming. They just don’t care. And hope you wont notice.
I actually feel that it is already spam if somebody makes a very strong opinionated post about a heavy subject and your comment doesn’t really show a real opinion.
For example with Growmap Gail’s posts about occupy Wall street. Normally I comment on her blog all the time. And I could say something about the subject, but I know that I haven’t really formed a well-informed opinion about the matter and I find it unethical to bs a comment. But still it gets filled with people who “agree” or have politically correct comments, and maybe many of them really do, but I don’t think all of them actually gave it as much thought as Gail did and just want to post their link.
(btw, this is in no way a critique on Gail’s comment policy, because it is impossible to judge who has a real opinion and who is just talking smart. And they all put thought in their answer so they are not mindless spammers.)
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If someone comments on post means they really like your post or they wanted backlink. And now everyone are aware that just by saying “nice post” or “thank you” wont do the trick. So people always try to leave good comment.
Spam comments are usually done by the robots and not the actual visitors. They are just try their luck to get the link and they do succeed. If you browse other blogs you will still see that thanks comments are still accepted.
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Twitter: AussieSire
Not everyone tries to leave a good comment Marks. You would be surprised how many comments I delete every day simply because people have not put any effort into their comment.
I know some who totally put good comments to their garbage bin if the comment doesn’t qualify to their basic commenting rules
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Twitter: AussieSire
I don’t know, if the comments really good I just remove their url. Sure beats the hell out of killing a good comment.
Hi interesting. I have just set up my first site and I am only just building up traffic. My dilemma is I want people to comment. So that others see that is an active site and at the moment I am reluctant to delete comments even if they are probably spam until I am getting a decent amount of traffic and comments allike. I think only then will I create a comment policy to get rid of the rubbish. The other problem I have at the moment is I am trying to research loads of stuff for the site that a spam comment is well down the list. Hopefully when I am more up and running I will have more time.
Thanks lee
Twitter: AussieSire
Even when I first started blogging I always deleted comments that were not of a high standard. If you don’t people will look on you as being less than perfect.
If you want to attract comments then become a dofollow blog, reply to all your comments, and use commentluv premium. If you can’t afford commentluv premium then just get the normal one and also the keywordluv plugin. One other plugin I recommend is the replyme plugin so that people get notified when someone replies to their comment. Great for return traffic