{"id":4880,"date":"2011-01-18T13:39:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T18:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=4880"},"modified":"2011-01-18T13:39:33","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T18:39:33","slug":"some-thoughts-on-comments-and-comment-spam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/18\/some-thoughts-on-comments-and-comment-spam\/","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on comments and comment spam"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>‘ve been thinking about comments lately. It was Delurking Day the other day, and I got an interesting e-mail from a reader. She asked me why bloggers think comments are so important. She noted that we as site owners can plainly see the traffic, so why do we want people to comment?<\/p>\n

I thought it was a good question, and I’ve had more time to think about it since I answered her. So, here’s my expanded answer, in case you were wondering the same thing! When I blog, I open up my life and my perspective for your entertainment. When you comment, you return the favour. Sure, I can see that someone from Nepean clicked over to my site on January 18 from OttawaStart.com, and I can tell that they found the content fairly engaging if that person then clicked on my ‘about me’ page and my archives and spent 15 minutes reading. (I love it when I see that!) But most of the time, all I see is a click in and a click out and I wonder — did you find what you were looking for? Were you entertained? Were you disappointed? Will you be back? What did you think? <\/p>\n

And I wonder about YOU. Who are you and why are you here? Are you a mom or a dad looking for things to do in Ottawa with your kids? Are you a photo junkie, a government hack like me, a student? Are you looking for information about kids’ birthday parties in Ottawa or retractable beer handles or the reliability of google maps or TtV photography? (All of those are search hits from the last four hours, by the way!) Comments let me know what you like and what you don’t like, which influences what I write and post to a certain extent. Comments are good!<\/p>\n

So when are comments bad? This is something that has come up a few times in various forms in my blogging career, but I don’t see a lot of discussion about this. When does a comment become comment spam? Most comment spam is obvious, and askimet and other spam filters do a good job of filtering most of the obvious spam out of the comment box. But what about when a real person is commenting with a rather obvious agenda of attracting eyeballs to his or her own site? I actually called someone on this once, when it got to be too obvious and I was feeling particularly feisty. That conversation did not end well, let me tell you!<\/p>\n

And what about when people use the comment box for advertising? This is a sticky one for me, especially on really popular posts of mine, like the “40 free or almost free activities” post or the mom’s guide to birthday parties. People have commented something like, “Great post! I also offer XYZ service that I think your readers would really like! Come visit my site at XYZ.com!” To me, that’s free advertising at my expense, and I bristle at that. I’ve also deleted quite a few pitches posted as comments on my “about me” or “contact me” page. Pitches should be private and e-mailed, IMHO, and give me the opportunity to share and endorse or not as I see fit.<\/p>\n

But am I being too sensitive about this? Should I allow this space to become a bulletin board for services? I mean, there’s no real harm done to me, unless that person would have otherwise paid for ad space — which I know they would not have done. So am I overreacting to delete advertising or pitches masquerading as comments? <\/p>\n

As always, I welcome your comments! What do you think about the grey area between commenting and using the comment box to promote yourself or your service? Would you differentiate between a PR or ad firm using the comments to advertise versus a small business? Do comments-as-spam bother you as a reader? How do you deal with it on your blog? I’d love to hear your thoughts!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I‘ve been thinking about comments lately. It was Delurking Day the other day, and I got an interesting e-mail from a reader. She asked me why bloggers think comments are so important. She noted that we as site owners can plainly see the traffic, so why do we want people to comment? I thought it … Continue reading “Some thoughts on comments and comment spam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4882,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions\/4882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}