Comment Policy
Before we start I want to say that I love getting comments on my blog. It’s the interaction of blogs that make blogging fun for me. Without that interaction writing a post is like talking to myself in a crowded room. Sure, other people may overhear me but I’m still just talking to myself.
That said, I do want to layout a few guidelines that I’d prefer you follow if you’re going to comment here. Nothing too serious, just a few tips to keep everything smooth.
Don’t spam
While I have no problem with you entering your web address when you comment, please don’t take the comment form as an invitation to sell “enhancement” pills, mortgage loans, or any of the other junk that fills up my inbox.
Between the Wordpress moderation of trouble words and a couple of plugins I’ve gotten to a point where relatively little spam gets through to my blogs. But some still does, and I delete it quickly. And in the past I have had to ban some IP addresses that are continual problems. But those tend to be automated posters and not real people.
Relevant links are a good thing
Want to share a link that you think follows along with a posting? Feel free to share. Did you write an article on a topic that matches a post? Again, feel free to share. The intent behind this blog is to help people with managing a website. If you share a link that helps that goal then it fits in perfectly.
Irrelevant links are a bad thing
On the other side of linking is random links to unrelated sites. Please don’t throw a link in your comment to an unrelated site just for the sake of getting traffic to that site.
And I don’t consider entering your url in the comments field irrelevant if the comment is good. What I don’t like is a short comment like “Great Site!” linking back to an affiliate site.
rel=nofollow?
I’ve got a plugin called Link Love installed that let’s me tell WordPress to take out the rel=nofollow setting on links for visitors that have left 5 or more comments. The plugin defaults to 10 but that just seems like too many.
Did I get something wrong?
Although I try to double check everything I post, sometimes a mistake gets through. Call me out on it! Best case is that we can discuss it and figure out why I got it wrong. Even if I’m flat out wrong, I’d like to know just so I can correct it.
And a thank you
I want to send a digital thank you to Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net. The idea to have a comments policy page came from his site. I’m sure that on a site the size of Problogger it is more important to have a well laid out policy for comments than it is on my little corner of the internet, but it’s easier to start with it now than it would be to go back after I have more than 2 comments.