We love Comments…but not Spam

Hi.  Over the past year, we’ve looked at a lot of blogs and seen a lot of approaches to how people look at and/or use the Comments section of blogs.  Most readers, frankly, ignore them and leave it to others to provide input or pushback.  Others automatically post self-serving and irrelevant comments with links to more crude sites that you’d probably expect (the good news is that my platform uses something called Akismet, which blocks most of them so I’m the only one who sees them…moments before I delete them.  Over on my Bulldog Simplicity blog, this software has blocked nearly 600 automated comments in my first eight months there.

Bloggers also have a lot of different approaches to Comments, with their own standards of what’s acceptable and what’s not on their blogs.  Some allow pretty much anything.  Others don’t allow you to promote your own blog through a link.  Some have language standards; others don’t allow comments at all.  From where I sit, my blogs are an office of sorts, so I have no problem with feedback so long as it’s offered with respect and (hopefully) a bit of restraint.  So here are our views on the subject:

1.  Comments are great.  The truth is that they may very well be more important than anything we write.  We’re trying to build a community and we want everyone to talk to each other.  Whether it’s your first comment or your 10,000^th, please feel free to be an active participant.
2. Spam, not so great.  If any automated spam comments slip by Akismet, we will delete them immediately.
3. Relevant links in comments are acceptable…and encouraged.  We’re fine with comments that point to a link on your site or someone else’s so long as they pertain to the topic.  We feel these add to the conversation and helps build a community.  If the comment has a link that doesn’t pertain to the post you’re commenting on, that’s a good way to simultaneously annoy us and get your comment deleted.  In the bigger picture, that kind of behavior is a great way to damage your reputation (and everyone knows you can’t delete anything from the Internet so it’ll be there forever).
4. Signatures in comments – also OK.  It never occurred to me that this should be an issue, but I’ve seen a lot of debate on the practice.  The people I respect in this space seem to be falling on the side of allowing them so long as the comments are relevant and add something to the conversation.  So that means that if you just write great post and then drop in your signature block, we may very well delete the comment.

Look, the goal here is to provide visitors with resources that help them make a critical decision and then be successful if they decide to move forward with consulting.  All of us involved in Consultant Launch Pad are spending lots of time – some of it when we could be with family and friends – to add value to an important topic.  The truth is that this page probably doesn’t pertain to anyone who’s actually reading it.  We just want to have our position in black and white.

Feel free to comment.