I need help with commenting and blogging.
Inappropriate Blog Comments
Allowing readers to post comments on your blog is a fun way to both interact with others as well as receive feedback about your post. Unfortunately, the occasional reader may post something offensive or inappropriate. In addition, spammers love a free link and often post comments on blogs simply to promote themselves or products and websites that they represent. Not only do these types of comments affect you, they can affect your readers. For example, if readers know that your blog posts are filled with spam comments, they won’t bother to read them. On the other hand, if they know that you actively moderate your blog’s comments, they’ll be more likely to value the blog as a whole.
Managing Blog Comments Before They Appear
Most blog software provides some sort of control over comments. You are generally able to determine whether or not to allow comments as well as edit or delete comments once they’ve been made. For Example, if you use WordPress, you can set up your preferences for comments in the Settings > Discussion area. In WordPress’s case, a variety of options are available including default comment settings, user registration requirements, comment notification, comment moderation, and comment blacklists.
If you are receiving excessive spam comments, enabling moderation and setting up a blacklist are two steps that you should definitely implement if available through your blog host. Comment moderation at its simplest involves having an administrator approve the comment before it is posted.
Many sites, such as Filetonic.com, use a validation of some sort to ensure that the comment poster is a real person and not an automated program. In Filetonic’s case, the user must answer a simple math question in order to post the comment. The comment then sits, unpublished, until one of the administrators reads and approves it.
Blacklisting, if available from your blog host, involves creating a list of URLs, e-mail addresses, names, or specific words. When these items are contained within a comment, the comment is marked as spam and not posted. For example, if your blog is attracting a lot of spam comments along the lines of “buy Viagra online,” you can enter that phrase in your blacklist filter and any future comments with that phrase will automatically be filtered out.
Managing Blog Comments after They are Posted
While your comment settings will weed out the bulk of the inappropriate comments appearing on your blog, inevitably a few will slip through the cracks. Fortunately, most blog programs have mechanisms for dealing with posted comments. In WordPress’s Dashboard area is a section aptly labeled “Comments.” Clicking this category displays the Edit Comments screen where you can view pending, approved, and spam comments. You can also edit and delete the comments from here.
Managing comments is an important part of running your own blog. It’s your blog, so make sure that you are completely comfortable with the comments posted on it. When it doubt, delete the comment.
