Jangro.com - Latest Comments in Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Jason Pearson — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:02:58 -0000

Ah, yes you are right Scott. They don't know. It is unfortunate that they are not informed of this nofollow. This is definitely an interesting controversy on the Internet lately and has been intriguing to read people's opinions on it.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:52:41 -0000

Jason, most people probably don't even know what nofollow is and it's on by default.

That's sort of the reason for the whole dofollow movement, to help people understand this.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Dana — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 01:16:38 -0000

So far, I've only had two "questionable" ones. Everyone else is obvious. These two guys link to a site that is actually moderately relevant, though, and I just left them. And the link is only through their name...it is just clear that they haven't really read the entry and are responding predominantly to the title.

One thing that did tick me off a little happened yesterday...I'm in the middle of moving my site which is abundantly clear if you go to the old one. Some guy came to my site, presumably from one of the various blogrolls out there, and cursed at me for not following when I was a part of the community. I have seen a lot of that toward people who either have it set up wrong or follow for so many comments.

My reaction was to leave the community with one blog and wait and see with the other. I do not know who these people are, but aggressiveness is not going to help the community at all.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Michael D Price — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:08:13 -0000

I know exactly how you feel my man.

So many people have taken the fun out of blogging all together. I remember back when you got a comment on your blog, it was actually someone speaking their mind about what you posted, but any more people just come by and do "drive by" commenting just so people will see their name, maybe click on a link and wind up on a page that is just full of all these products in which most are junk, or illegally sod internet marketing products.

The worst part about it, is they usually dont even spend the time to make the comment worth a darn ....

Actually thinking about it that's not the worst. The worst is all the spam posts that I get on my own blog that are nothing but links to sex toys and viagra, created by these commenting bots. Thank goodness for the spam plugins!!

And if that doesnt take the cake, what about these marketers that cant even take the time themselves to actually post a comment, and they hire these people from other countries to make posts to blogs using their information.

What was the net come too ...?

Michael D Price
http://michaeldprice.com

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:12:07 -0000

Guerilla (or Brian),

I'm with Andy on this. The fact that you use keywords in your post's link text doesn't bother me so much.

Since you've put yourself up there as an example, let's look at it. Sure, it's keyword stuffed link text. But it's not that competitive, and it's a "real" blog with someone real behind it and not something that's apparent sole purpose is to grab search engine rankings (judgement call).

Besides, an Internet Marketer blog is relevant to this one and to this post. So it "feels" ok.

If this blog was about sex and pr0n, I probably wouldn't mind the comments with "sex toys" in the link text and comments from "Guerilla Internet Marketers" would probably just seem like that, guerilla internet marketing, and out of place.

To me, comments are the best part of blogging, so I'll make time. The Viagra stuff never sees the light of day anyway, so it's the gray area stuff that I must make judgement calls on.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

AndyBeard — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:47:43 -0000

Brian, I am not sure about Scott, but you have an about page on your blog that clearly identifies you as a real person, and I wouldn't begrudge someone a relevant anchor link... unless you happened to make comments on 3 or 4 more "dofollow" posts in the next 30 minutes clearly identifying you as someone who is working their way down a dofollow list.
Subscribe to comments can be used in all kinds of ways.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Guerilla Internet Marketing — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:40:07 -0000

I think it's a tough issue. Now certain posts stick out like a sore thumb - ones with no useful content littered with Viagra references. Others may be tough to make a call on. Take this post for example, the name field is the name of my site, which also happens to have a competitive keyword in the name. Is this spam? Is this coincidence? Or is this a gray area?

I think it all comes down to time management. If you are willing to put in the time to police your comments for blatant spam, then that's fine. If it becomes too much, then you may want to go back to the dreaded nofollow at some point when it gets to be too much of a burden that distracts you from more productive opportunities.

For now, it's your site so you can keep on using your judgment! :)

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:31:50 -0000

Given that you were searching for dofollow, I'd guess "savvy". Why not stick around and work your way toward "friends".

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Reztar — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:22:47 -0000

To tell you the truth, I found your site because I was googling using "dofollow movement". I have an idea in mind that I will not comment on post that does not interest me, either I could not understand the post... or I just don't have something to say about the post. Just like you.. I hate spamming comments.

PS: I like your category... maybe you can tell me on which category I belong :D

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

lucia — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:50:54 -0000

It would be easy enough to write a "report comment" plugin, let the community comment and still leave it to the blogger to decide. This could help quite a bit with what I call "Daniel" spam-- that is stuff that we are all seeing but eventually realizie is spam. (Yet, somehow, we aren't sure the first time.)

I'm going to be making another pass through my plugin. The hard part is never the coding, it's deciding what features are most useful, worth the cpu and worth having people spend the few minutes to "learn".

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Maurice (TheCaymanHost) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:14:46 -0000

Oh and Stubsy I agree with Scott, your policy sucks, particularly as you feel at liberty to leave your own URL on other people's blogs. That sir, we call hypocrisy where I come from.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Maurice (TheCaymanHost) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:02:28 -0000

I'm inclined to agree with the policy of editing links if they appear to link to something undesirable or spammy. I think a selective nofollow is too generous.

I had a commenter the other day who left his name as "Moby" and linked to a very new, as in one "article" free Blogger blog about, you guessed it, Moby and where to download some song or another. The interesting thing was that the comment asked "how do I add your posts to Digg, I can't figure it out".

Sneaky. To me it appeared to be a blatant link juice attempt. Needless to say having followed the link, the URL was deleted but I left the comment with a polite answer. There was of course, never a follow up comment from "Moby". There are more and more people using Blogger "blogs" with no content, filled with Adsense, crap pages and they seem to think that lots of links from other sites will bring them results in the SERPS. I know, dream on, but someone out there obviously plants these ideas in their thick heads.

I don't feel inclined to give anyone any kind of link if I think they are chancers, and neither do I think, as one commenter has already stated, that I am duty bound to publish an all encompassing comments policy, I'm tired of comment and trackback spam attempts and if I think something looks suspect, I'll deal with it however I see fit.

I'm like all bloggers, I enjoy thought provoking and useful comments, I don't edit out people who disagree with my opinions, argue against my views or correct my mistakes but human comment spam is really irritating.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:20:03 -0000

TDavid, thanks for the info, I appreciate it. Just found your moderated comments and released them. I'll leave them here at least until I can dig deeper.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:03:24 -0000

Kun, I agree that comments are important and that a blogger shouldn't edit out comments just because they didn't like what was written, such as criticism or disagreement. That would hurt the credibility and integrity of the blogger.

But we're talking about abuse here. When you go to someone's house, you don't necessarily agree with them, but you do show some courtesy and respect. Spammers, overt or not, show neither.

Stubsy, now that's pretty harsh. I think you're turning potential new regular visitors away. Putting in URLs is a part of commenting on blogs. It tells you and the readers who I am. If you deleted a comment of mine for no good reason, I'd certainly not comment again and would probably not come back.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Kun Dang — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:22:29 -0000

Well, comments are such an essential part of blogging I don't think it would should be down to the editor or publisher to moderate it.

The kind of plugin that would be useful should be incorporate community policing, whereby comments are rated or - by visitors/users and if comments are -3 for eg, they will automatically be deleted.

Now that would be a cool thing to add to wordpress!

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

PublisherZilla — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:36:40 -0000

A selective nofollow sounds like a good idea. And I definitely think it's a fair practice. But it may turn into more extra work than you want. But then again, maybe it's easier than I'm envisioning.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:57:59 -0000

Great point John. Due to some of the types of old posts that I have here, I'm lucky that I get many first-time and one-time commmenters every day. Therefore, I have a hard time putting up more barriers to them, like moderating first-timers or no-following them.

Andy's got the best reason for moderation, though, so that people who have subscribed for email alerts won't get the spam in email.

As for deleting the URL, yeah, it's your blog. I agree and may go that route myself. Or remove the comment entirely (though sometimes they are good comments)

And Mr. Rico Savvy, I'd say you've reached friend status here and many places. I didn't mention it, but I'm with you on being concerned about SEO effects of having the outbound links be somewhat relevant as well.

Lucia, I like the features in your plugin, which I've downloaded. I'll give it a go and check it out.

Thanks for the comments, I DO appreciate it.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

John Hunter — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:34:51 -0000

Good post. I agree with everything you said and I understand the "drive by" perception of many dofollow bloggers - because it is often true. But there is also the fact that in all forms of collective communication like blogs at the very beginning, before comment spam was common, or say email lists in days of old, it is very common to have a few prolific commenters and many that never comment (and then type out a comment and then continuing to read for months or longer before ever commenting again).

For that reason, I just worry the spammers may make dofollowers not take commenters seriously without multiple comments. I don't have a solution, because the drive by comments are much more frequent (in my experience) but I just want to pass that idea on so people understand it is not really an odd behavior to have very limited comments from many people. It is not a prima facia case that someone is a drive by commenter if they only post once and you don't see another comment - I guess that is all I really want to say.

I think the tactic I will use to be more likely to delete the url if I have a question and have the comment posted. Occasionally, I am sure someone will think it is "unfair" that I removed the link to whatever but it is my blog so...

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Blog Strokes — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:08:18 -0000

Call me Rico Savvy, baby. lol.

I like the break down a lot here Scott. And the commentary on each category of commenters is great. You've kind of solidified some things I've been thinking about since we all started talking about SEOing our names in comments off and on a few weeks back.

I think I may be a little more mercenary than some others here, all of whom I nonetheless have respect for. I don't draw the line so clearly at whether the link is SEO'ed so much as whether it is SEO'ed advantageously to me.

An SEO'ed link to a blog theme directory (or even a blog theme shop) along with a good post would fly by with no problems, because the SEO works to my advantage as well. But an SEO'ed link to a shoe store on the same blog would have to run a much more stringent quality test. But still, if the comment added genuine value I might let it go.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

lucia — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:10:04 -0000

I am noticing a lot of these too. Because a few sometimes get through the spam filters and people don't know they are spam at first, I'm planning an extension to help us catch spam we may have let through. (I just need to get off my heinie and write it. I've been too amused by Mahalo to write plugins. )

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

TDavid — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:40:31 -0000

Another error. Man, this K2 template or whatever must be buggy.

I got a CAPTCHA request with no actual captcha image showing with my last comment (that still shows awaiting moderation).

Feel free to delete these off topic comments, BTW, I'm just giving you info you might find useful for debugging and this is more convenient than chasing down your email and going that route. Here's a screenshot of what I received:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com...

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:07:56 -0000

I was joking man, wasn't really blaming Matt!

My guess is that rather than a plugin (which I'm not using many of) is that it's the K2 template and it's Ajaxy comments that's eating the plus signs. Just a guess.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

TDavid — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:14:41 -0000

Also, the default core Wordpress accepts the plus sign in email addresses.

How to figure out which one? Carefully go through your list of plugins that have something to do with comments, disable them, and then burn a test comment to figure out which specific plugin is the culprit. Somebody's code, probably an overanxious regular expression, is axing the plus sign in comments and overriding the default email address field for leaving comments so that a valid email address with a plus in it cannot be left ;)

One you discover the culprit, you can drop the plugin author a line of the issue.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

TDavid — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:09:52 -0000

It has to be a plugin you're using that's doing it because the core wordpress doesn't do anything bizarre with the plus sign. So Matt isn't who to consult, it's the plugins you are using that have something to do with comments.

Re: Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray

Scott — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:01:43 -0000

Damned if I know. ask Matt Mullenweg. ;)

I had no idea pluses were getting stripped.

Please pardon this little test... :Begin:~!@#$%^&*()_ :End:

[added]well look at that. There was a plus after the underscore. Bizaare.[/added]