Blogger’s Alchemy Comments Policy
I hoped not to have to put a comments policy in place here, and I’ve successfully held off until now.
CommentLuv Premium takes care of Spambots and some trackbacks for me.
However I’m no longer using Akismet as a spam filter since it has a nasty habit of netting as many genuine comments as spam (I encourage you not to use it on your blog either). If you’re not sure what Akismet is, I touched upon it in my WordPress Spam Comment Prevention post)
But nonetheless, there’s a continuing flow of comments appearing here which I consider to be valueless, unwelcome spam.
For that reason, I’m laying these rules out plain and clear to avoid any unpleasant surprises and (hopefully) to deter some of those link vampires who would suck energy from my blog and waste my time for whatever their reasons may be.
If you ever find your comments disappearing on this blog, or feel that you’ve been wrongly labelled a spammer – contact me and I’ll be happy to explain why I considered them spam or trash, and review their status is need be.
Comments Policy
1 – I love Comments!
I love discussion, debate, feedback, appreciation, insight, constructive criticism and community contribution
2 – I don’t love Spam.
Spam comments, which are comments designed only to take, not to add to a post, are STEALING. Stealing time from the blogger who has to moderate them, as well as link juice.
- If I find anyone stealing from my home, they’re in big frikkin’ trouble – and my blog is my online home.
- Here’s a summary of what I call spam, in this context:
- Any comment made by someone who hasn’t at least skim-read the post – I put lots of sub heads and bold bits in so it doesn’t take long to get a vague idea what I’m on about.
- Comments made for the sole purpose of gaining a link without contributing to the topic
- Comments which link back to a sales page
- Comments which simply restate the title and or topic theme
- Other languages – Sorry friends in distant lands, I wish I spoke more than a few words of Thai and Tamil but I don’t, and nor do most of my readers.
Any of the above will logged as Spam on a large and ever growing global security cloud network (at the very least)
3 – No abusive or personal attacks on anyone.
Simple really. I’ll delete any comments that ‘cross the line’
4 – No links or signatures in the comment body unless they’re relevant to the post or discussion.
Commenters get a link from the name field, and a CommentLuv link, so there’s no need to add any more links in most circumstances.
In this instance, I’ll either delete the link, the comment or even spam the comment depending on relevance, what the comment adds, and where the link goes to.
5 – I want to know your name!
You are welcome to add up to 3 keywords in the name field after your name, using either the ‘@’ sign or ‘|’ symbol.
(name) @ (keywords) or (name) | (keywords) is fine.
No name = deletion, unless it’s a great comment.
I’d encourage you to read and comment on three or more posts with the same name and keywords, so that you get dofollow links in this field for all your comments.
Read my post about How to use anchor text to understand how you can benefit from this feature.
6 – I’d really like to see your face as well.
You probably won’t get your comment deleted for this alone, but I’d really like to have your gravatar appear next to your comment. I’ll post a quick tutorial soon on how to get one if you don’t have one.
7 – Very occasionally I’ll edit a comment
But only for spelling errors (such as mis-spelling my name) or grammatical errors which obscure the intended meaning.
I speak very good Indian English, and conversational Asian English (I’m fluent in fact) but not all of my readers do.
In these instances I will never attempt to distort the meaning or information in the comment.
8 – I reserve the right to use any comments left on my blog
Could be in future posts, marketing or testimonials. If for some reason you’re not into that, let me know at the time of commenting.
9 – I reserve the right to waive any or all of these rules
If I feel like it, I may at any time allow comments which fail to meet the above criteria, for any or no reason at all,
But don’t count on it.
What do you think?
Do you have issues with spammers or ‘unsatisfactory comments’ on your blog? Do you have a comments policy in place to deal with it?
Have I been to harsh – or too lenient with these rules and regulations?
Leave me a comment below to share your views.
And (please) – NO SPAM
Image adapted from ‘Giant Megaphone #theflaminglips’ by Eric Steuer – CC 2.0
Comments Policy © 2011 Blogger’s Alchemy
you can delete this comment
juz wanted to say that the the example comment by WizardNote and the way you replied is so damn funny
lmao
I strongly recommend against using ANY third party comment system and especially Livefyre because they are far too easy to censor and I have seen evidence that they are censoring controversial sites including any posts in support of the Occupy protests.
It is unwise to give control of YOUR comments to any other entity. Keep them where you can hopefully make sure they never disappear and watch for signs of censorship if you regularly comment in blogs using third party commenting systems.
Personally, since there are limited numbers of hours in any given day I simply focus on other Dofollow CommentLuv KeywordLuv or CommentLuv Premium Keywords providing blogs and ignore almost all of the rest.
All of the blogs I regularly tweet new posts for, read and comment in, link to, and add to my lists which I use to offer paid work, recommend services, and share whatever special deals I get offered are in the DoFollow CommentLuv community.
Do you know that CommentLuv is not working on this page? None of the comments have links and I am not being offered any. There are separate boxes to allow CommentLuv links on pages versus posts and that box may have gotten unticked (or you wanted it that way).
Amen to everything you said! And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to work my way over here, Jym – it’s been a long three weeks, as you can imagine. I’m still icing down my hands! I’m glad you liked my Spambot post. Isn’t that a riot? How lazy | stupid | clueless | rude does a person have to be, to do that?
Hi Jym!
Thanks for inviting me back to your Blog…I know, it’s been awhile.
Since I’ve gotten serious with article marketing, I’ve noticed
an increase of questionable comments myself.
On the upside though, this has to mean that our blogs are
making some decent noise out in cyberspace, lol.
Have a highly inspired day…your tribal friend Steven Suchar
I also had to implement a comment policy, but I also realize that spammers don’t really care if I have a policy in place or not. They will still leave a spam comment.
The one thing that I do like about creating the commenting policy is that I can remove comments from individuals that use keywords instead of their name, even though the comment was valid and related to the post. I mention the fact that I will delete comments in the policy, so if they become upset that their comment was removed, they should have followed the rules.
Hi Jym,
I love your comments policy. I have just introduced one myself but I did try and not do so. It just seemed to be so unnecessary in my opinion but considering that I was suffering the same proliferation of spam as yourself and many other bloggers, I just had to go ahead and do it.
I have tried to not only be some kind of ‘comment dictator’ by also giving away an ebook on how to write great comments. I am hoping those that want to write better comments will learn to do so.
~Marcus
I had to create a comment policy a year ago, GASP is good but still doesn’t catch the manual user spam which is growing rapidly as companies pay people pennies to go and physically comment on sites trying to sneak URL’s in the comment to get the link benefit.
Honestly, I still use CommentLuv Premium on 2 of my blogs that I administrate, but 2 others I switched to Livefyre to test out if I can cut spam and comment moderation even lower. I get maybe 1-2 spam comments per week now that make it through to WordPress post with Livefyre, vs about 10-20 per day I had to manually moderate with CommentLuv but I miss the incentive benefits of CommentLuv which is why I am still using it on some other blogs.
Sometimes, I feel it pretty hard to tag a comment as genuine or spam that leaves commentLuv link with completely irrelevant type of niche post. That arise no interest me and I don’t think does any good to other readers as well. Should I consider them as Spams and remove them?
Thanks for comments policy. I have added my pic to prove that I am human being
Hi Jym,
Very well said! I’m in the process of developing my own comments policy too. I’ve been getting a lot of faceless and spammy comments recently.
In fact this morning I published a post on the topic to start a discussion among bloggers and commenters.
Stacy
I use Type-Pad Anti-Spam with Conditional Captcha and the combination stops the spambots cold. Manually posted spam still winds up in Pending Comments but is, like you say, obvious.
. Good to see that’s not necessarily a disqualifying factor.
A couple of times, I played around with I call “spam butchering.” I’d edit the comment to totally denigrate the spammer, change the link from their site to a funny, spam-related video on YouTube, then post. I found that wasn’t really my style, though, and wound up permanently deleting the butchered bits of commentary.
Before and since, I just trash it.
Regarding photos: I hardly ever have my picture taken and there’s not one of me anywhere on the Internet so far as I know. The only photo of myself I have from recent years is on my driver’s license and I’d just as soon not upload that
Like your policy and rant and, dare I say, great post.
Jym,
Sometimes you just have to take a stand and draw that line in the sand. letting people know the right way to leave comments is a good thing. It sets the foundation and expectations for your blog.
By the way it is YOUR blog and you can do with it what you will. That’s the beauty of this whole thing. let the rant run wild and hold those spammers accountable.
But here’s another thought as well. Sometimes new bloggers or those who are new to attraction marketing don’t yet know the ins and outs…rights and wrongs. Sometimes it’s the perfect opportunity to toss a little coaching their way.
Ken Pickard
The Network Dad
Nothing at all wrong with this, Jym. And, yes, I have a Comments policy on my business writing site (under Policies-clever heading, eh?)
I had to deactivate CommentLuv Premium as it wasn’t playing nice with my SEO plugin, so I’m still using Akisment. Maybe I just don’t get enough traffic, but I find Akismet catches most of these comments. Yes, once in a while it sends legt ones to the folder, but so far, I haven’t found to be a great number.
The spammers are getting smarter with using your name or post title or whatever, but they still are pretty obvious. I think every blog should have a comments policy.
I need to add it to my other two. Sigh, something else to add to my list.
Thanks, Jym.