The Truth About Blog Comments
As much as we all love the freedom that the internet provides us, it also breeds loudmouths with keyboard muscles. You spend an hour writing a blog post, some jackass spends 30 seconds glossing over it and bashing you. This image so perfectly represents an unfortunate minority of blog commenting:
Just something to keep in mind before you submit comments on any site; commenting negatively automatically discredits you. Instead, use a positive tone to voice your disagreement and provide a suitable solution or argument!
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Wtf r u tolkin bout?!?? Jused to be nice blog but now stupid artikles bout tv and stuf. Kamon David!
Do you refer to a specific article and a comment?
No, there’s no point in calling idiots out. They usually make themselves apparent.
I disagree, I think you need the idiots to post stupid comments just to prove how smart you are :p
Haha, funny image, but I agree with your thoughts. Assholes gonna asshole, can’t do much about it. I actually coded some user scripts to hide comments section on some of the pages I visit, it takes away the possibility of getting curious about comments and then being dragged into comments hell.
+1 for using “asshole” as a verb
It seems like a comment section needs a “Flag for Stupidity” button more than a “Flag for Spam” button these days.
Brilliant idea — Stealing that to code into my next site =)
Hahahaha! Love that idea!
You should force users to solve those math captchas first:
http://martin-thoma.com/captcha/#Mathematics
But I guess the number of comments may converge to 0.
one really bad side effect to the internet still making its evolution into humanity is the rise of trolls. trolls, spam, just things that came into existence on a massive internet scale. and the whole time from the very first one, noone ever liked them. if u ever closed comments on any particular articles, we wouldnt be mad. most site owners or developers(your target demographic) want to participate through comments, but understand the troll intereference that happens sometimes.
John Scalzi’s policy is still one of my favorites: http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/site-disclaimer-and-comment-policy/ From the pre-amble: “I make no claims as toward being even-handed, fair, or nice. I write what I want here. Your being offended is not a reason for me to stop writing as I choose.”
About two years ago, I made the (difficult for me) decision to require Twitter for comments:
http://shiflett.org/blog/2011/mar/using-twitter-for-comments
It’s hard to really measure the impact of this, positive or negative, because I’ve been blogging so much less in recent years. My suspicion is that it has been a good thing, because feeling like you have to own what you say changes your behavior for the better.
Surprisingly, this did not eliminate manual comment spam. It just made it easier to deal with.
I’m curious if your opinion of blog comments would change if you didn’t allow anonymous comments.
I can’t agree with you more.
Sadly this happens everywhere you look, and not only blogs. Keep up the great articles.
I almost spit coffee through my nose at that 2nd image. Thanks for the great laugh this morning.
I understand what you mean about the negativity. My husband used to play Everquest and their forums were filled with negativity brimming on the edge of being outright hateful.
I think the days of ‘polite society’ have largely left us. But I would love to see people actually take to heart what you’ve put on this page.
Thanks for a thoughtful post and a great laugh!
Jeff Star sums it up pretty well I think “You will never find a more wretched hive” http://perishablepress.com/lessons-learned-after-5-years-of-blogging/
I can typing :)
You are correct , some people do simply say some thing.
I have faced same type of problem many time before. They just don’t expose themselves on post, but also spam my inbox via ‘Contact Me’ page. :(
If the world wasn’t full of Morons, internet would be so boring. There was a time when such people used to discourage me, and make me upset for a few hours per attack, but over the years I’ve realised, they just need to cut others “down” to their own size. When someone who has never written an article in a lifetime, attacks what you’ve written, it just reaffirms that you are at least one up. I used to block and delete such commentators, but now I actually highlight them. Makes for good fun :-)
Keep writing. You’re doing a brilliant job.