A lament for comments

Sigh. I just tried to post a comment on a large and popular blog-gone-commercial. I had a long and thoughtful comment typed out, and then I tried to post it. The site wanted me to sign in with a user-ID and password I probably acquired back in 2006 or so, the last time I was motivated to comment on this particular site. Um, long gone from my scabby little memory.

My other options were signing in through a myriad of social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc. But in order to do that, I’ll need to authorize an app to access my other social media accounts. I’ve always been kind of leery about this. Or I have to sign up for an account through the proprietary commenting service. Another set of user-IDs and passwords, and another source for spam. Ugh, seriously?

I hunted in vain for the simple, old-fashioned “name, e-mail address and your web site” options but alas, they are no longer available. So unless I want to allow an unknown and potentially unreliable site to have permission to access my social media accounts, my opinion doesn’t count and nobody wants to hear from me. I simply paged away without being able to post my comment.

It makes me sad.

I’ve been blogging a l-o-n-g time, I know. I’m a dinosaur. But I kinda really miss the old days, when you bent over backwards to get comments and when comments were the lifeblood of your blog. I remember how I agonized over capchas and hated that there was that last hoop to jump through. I’ve thought about installing some of the new fangled comment systems that allow you to “like” specific comments, or reply in threads to individual comments. But I always fear they’d make commenting more difficult, and I never want to do that.

The commercialization of blogs doesn’t bother me. The fact that everyone who has a keyboard now has a blog doesn’t bother me. But this one bothers me. Comments are gold and should be treasured; you shouldn’t have to work so hard to post one.

What do you think? Should I stop whinging and just post through my FB or Twitter accounts?

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

11 thoughts on “A lament for comments”

  1. Nope! I completely agree. I never sign in through my social media accounts because I too am leery about allowing the apps access to my profiles. I want commenting to be easy too and I have a hard time understanding why blogs that are fairly uber commercial need all that added jazz.

  2. I agree with you. It’s one of the things that bugs me about Flickr and why I either post as Sumac River there or look for your pics on FB. But I usually have to redo the Captchas here as I find them hard to read.

  3. I LOVE comments! I remember the good old days too when all you had to do was press enter and your words just appeared. Now with the captcha and the “comments waiting for moderation” it’s a wonder a blogger gets any. I’ve learned to copy my comments before I press “submit” just in case it gets lost in the ether…

    I recently had to add more security to mine because I was getting spam but I hated having to do it. I wish I could say it was preventing people from commenting but unfortunately the heady number of less than one comment a week has unfortunately stayed the same LOL!

  4. I’m definitely less likely to comment if there are hoops to jump through, and I’m not interested in any blog that requires me to be a member. I understand why people do it – the spam out there is crazy – but it is frustrating. I wonder if this is one reason why blogs in general seem to be getting fewer comments these days.

  5. I’m glad I’m not the only dinosaur. πŸ™‚ It doesn’t escape me that my lament about comments is my most-commented-upon recent post. Ironic or what?

    Valerie, I’m sorry I make commenting harder for you – and you’re one of my most faithful long-time readers, too! I promise not to put up any *more* hoops for you to jump through. And yes, it’s always rather bugged me that you have to have a Flickr account to comment on Flickr — but then I rarely get spam comments there, so there’s that.

    Hahaha, just failed my own first attempt at the captcha for this comment – I feel your pain, friends! Did you know you only have to get one of the two correct to post?

  6. Hi Dani! I only read blogs on my phone these days, and I find that quite a few that I would like to comment on, their comment-management-system (whatever it may be) doesn’t work from a mobile device. I’ve honestly given up commenting for the most part (honestly, I was never very good at it before either!) but I’m still here and reading πŸ™‚

  7. I started blogging in 2006 on blogspot and it’s so much harder to interact with other bloggers now. I loathe all the different comment systems and wish I could just leave name/email/website. I also suck at capcha – it always takes me 2-3 tries!

  8. i pretty much only read blog through my reader now, so i have to make an extra effort to click out to leave a comment. which makes me feel really guilty. and then with wordpress blogs asking for passwords long forgotten i end up not leaving any comments at all. though i did discover that with wordpress you can leave bogus emails and it will allow you to comment. and then i just let the blogger know that it’s a bogus email and why. at least i can leave them comment love.

  9. I love comments! My blog isn’t super-popular, so when I get a comment, it is gold and I love it when I have a new reader – such an awesome feeling of connectivity. And especially when I get a laugh, or even a tear, that is awesome. I have noticed a major decline in comments – I think it is because we have so many other things we are communicating on – FB, Twitter, etc etc, so while we are still reading blogs, we (I) are not taking the time to comment. Love this post, I’m going to kick it old school and start commenting again πŸ™‚

  10. I know you’ve been having trouble with my new comment system (livefyre) and you’ve tweeted about your frustrations … so “boo!” to me and my new comment system! BUT I do know you’re not writing about my blog here since you specified “large” and “popular” πŸ™‚

    I struggle with what to do because I, like all bloggers, LOVE comments. But when I do comment on blogs, I appreciate the disques and livefyre features that allow discussions to thread and for me to be notified if someone has replied to my comment. Spam can be difficult to manage too and these systems help. I know there’s captcha, like you use, for spam catching, but I’ve always hated it because it always takes me a few times to try and interpret the fuzzy-stuck-together-fonts.

    So, all this to say, I got no easy answers here! I will now try and decipher the captcha thing below πŸ˜‰

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