“Advert” Comments
January 17th, 2008I’m curious as to what other bloggers do about these sort of things. I get a lot of comments every day on this blog. 90% of them are clearly spam; full of links to porn sites and to medication sites and the like. Others are comments that will get caught in the spam filter, some of them have titles in the name field however rather than people’s names, and that frustrates me because I’m not sure what to do.
Do I let them through as they are? In many cases I’ve tried to email the address that is in the comment field and wound up with fatal errors in which case I delete the comment, because I would prefer that someone comments with their link and uses a name of some sort rather than “New York Real Estate” or something like that.
I like receiving comments but then if I let them through I feel as though I’ve just been used for advertising. Something which I would prefer to broker a deal for given a good portion of my blog business is by paid link insertions, so I feel as though I’m being robbed a bit.
I just went through and unapproved several comments because I’m in discussion with the person whose been leaving them. I had changed the name on one of the comments to one that was derived from the name on the email address and less spammy but that was “not appreciated” because the author “has reasons” for using the keywords that he used. I replied that I don’t appreciate having to wade through tons of comments in my spam filter because of the keywords and feeling like I’m being used for free advertising. Then I realized I had let another comment through which is an advert type comment but from a different place so I screened that one as well.
This is turning into a major headache.
Maybe I’m thinking about this too much.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
If you’re feeling used, delete the comment. If it adds to the conversation, allow it. If their link leads to a site other than a blog, I remove their link and then publish the comment. You have to do what feels right for your site.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
They bug me a lot. Whether it adds to the conversation or not the person is in violation of my comment policy and I mark those as spam. Sorry but if you can’t read and follow my policy then I reserve the right to mark your comments as spam, end of story.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I have my wordpress set up to only automatically approve comments from users I have approved of in the past. I don’t let any of the automatic postings go through, they are junk and I feel it junks up my site. I just hit mark all as spam and send them to spammers hell. It feels good. lol
If they want to truly comment and leave a link, that’s a different story. But it needs to be an actual comment.
January 18th, 2008 at 12:44 am
I know you do not like the “title” rather than the name, but I hope you see this comment as a conversation and valid addition to what you’re blogging about. I have been “hired” to go to various blogs and comment on what I can. Though this is some kind of advertising, I have found so many blogs that I would love to read, even if I wasn’t led to them in this manner… I’m gonna have to agree with your first comment, if they don’t add to the conversation, or have anything real to say delete them. I can promise you, my email works, and I check it about once a week – and I won’t make a comment that doesn’t take some kind of real thinking toward the original blog
January 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
How did you establish a comment policy on your site? Is there a plug in for it, or did you just edit the content of your comments page? I think I need to put some rules in so that I can feel more confident about how I edit things.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:40 am
My wordpress is set up the same way, Val. Although that doesn’t stop some legitimate comments from being caught in the spam filter every once in a while.
There’s just been a rash lately of people leaving comments which do seem pertinent to the posts but the name text isn’t names.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:41 am
It seems like a lot of bloggers have been struggling with this question lately. Personally, I’m of two minds. I appreciate someone taking the time to write a thoughtful comment, but on the other hand, how much more effort is it to conform to the accepted blog ettiquette? I generally agree with the policy of changing display names that aren’t actual names, and if the poster doesn’t like it, then start filtering their comments.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
That’s pretty much what I’m doing from now on; and I have it written above the comments…although apparently I need to move it down in the code because it’s showing up multiple times right now
but anyway. I have it written.