13
May

Comment Challenge Day 12 - Assessing comment-friendliness

   Posted by: Greg Schwartz   in Bloggery, Professional Development

I’m a little behind on the challenge and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. Day 12’s challenge has us assessing how easy or difficult we make it for people to comment.

I won’t belabor the assessment with too much detail here. I moderate first-time commenters and that’s enough to keep out the spam. I don’t want to make moderation a consistent nuisance for people who visit regularly.

I’ve added a Live Comment Preview plugin at Steve Lawson’s suggestion to reduce anxiety about a comment not appearing with the format that the commenter intended. I don’t have captchas or anything like that. I do have it set to require a name and email address, although you could fake that easily enough, I suppose. Maybe I’ll remove that requirement, but I’m not really interested in anonymous commenting. Thoughts on that? Is there something you see that I should be doing differently? I’m open to suggestions.

Tags:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Bloggery, Professional Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 comments so far

Mike McDermott
 1 

Hi Greg - I’d rate your blog pretty high on the ‘comment friendly” scale. One of the big factors that you don’t mention in your post is that you answer comments consistently and promptly. I’m sure it is encouraging to commenters to feel that they are being heard.

May 14th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sue Waters
 2 

Dare I say it is I also agree with Mike. Gold star on the “Comment friendly” scale - very easy for people to comment. Also I find your template very calm and inviting. Mike is also correct about answering comments consistently and promptly however not sure if you want to mention that because there may be occasion for when you won’t be as prompt. I wouldn’t do anything differently :)

Also wondering when Mike is going to do another video comment? (It was you Mike that read the prepare comment? - apologies if I have that wrong).

May 14th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Greg
 3 

Aw shucks, thanks Mike and Sue. I’ve been trying even harder than usual to be responsive, but you’re probably right Sue. Even this week, I’ve already experienced some difficulty keeping up with the challenge and everyone’s great comments.

I like this template a lot too. I have to figure out why the sidebar breaks in IE, but I’m not an expert in that kind of troubleshooting.

Mike will have to answer your last question, but yes, he’s the individual behind the infamous scripted comment.

May 14th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Mike McDermott
 4 

Well… It really wasn’t so much a script as an outline… :-)

May 14th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
walt crawford
 5 

You do score well: commenting isn’t a problem.

On my little blog, I’ve been able to avoid the first-time-moderation requirement or adding a capcha, but that’s me: Between LISHost’s server moderation and some fairly tight Spam Karma 2 settings, I’ve had remarkably little trouble with spam getting through (and only about one real comment a month getting trapped as spam).

You may reach a broader audience, so Spam Karma (or Akismet) might not be enough. First-time-moderation adds a little burden for you, but it’s a sound policy.

May 14th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Greg
 6 

Thanks, Walt. Praise always welcome. I’m less concerned about the burden first-time moderation puts on me, which is negligible, than on the psychological barrier it might present for a new reader who wishes to comment.

But since it doesn’t explicitly warn you of the moderation process before you submit, I guess the person has already committed before they learn of the moderation. Unless, of course, they’ve read my new “comment policy.” Hmmm…

May 14th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Sue Waters
 7 

Checked it in IE 7 and looks okay. What happens? Not good that it breaks in IE since most non-techies use IE.

Yeah sure Mike 8-) I seem to remember you had it written on the computer (only jealous since I hadn’t thought of doing that).

I try very hard to respond to all commenters but with two blogs and work its really hard. Which is why I would never put it in writing.

May 14th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Greg
 8 

The Categories box ignores the delineation of the podroll and plants itself in the same spot. Very messy.

May 14th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

Leave a reply

Name (*)
Mail (will not be published) (*)
URI
Comment
« Back to text comment