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Commenting: keep the entry barriers low

by Scott Bird | November 14, 2006
Filed in Blogging , Favourites

I recently noted a quote from No-one Listening which stated :

I’ll only say it once: A lack of comments does not equal a lack in readership.

That said, feedback can be a wonderful thing. In particular, comments on a post provide an immediate discussion on your site (and I'm not talking about spam here - which will certainly be dealt with). In order to elicit comments from your readers, keep the barriers to entry low. Make it easy for them. As with all things on the web, the user (leaving a comment in this case) and the webmaster (looking after the site) can see things very differently. The trick is to align the two visions. From the point of view of the commenter : The post is of interest, and they would like to contribute information to the discussion. From the point of view of the webmaster : This is one more piece of information that must be manually checked for possible spam or undesirable content. Note that 'undesirable' does not just mean a comment that disagrees with the webmaster's own opinion; it refers to language or statements which other readers are likely to find objectionable. With these aims in mind, there are several ways in which a webmaster may set up commenting on his/her site. These are : Unmoderated, unapproved Anyone can post a comment on this site at any time, and it appears on the site immediately. This makes life easiest for the commenter, although it allows spammers unfettered access to the site. Moderated, unapproved Anyone can post a comment, however the webmaster has an opportunity to review them prior to their appearance on the site. This still makes life extremely easy for the commenter, gives the webmaster control over the material on his/her site, and is the recommended option. Unmoderated, approved Only registered site users are allowed to leave comments (either via a site-wide registration process or an authentication service such as Six Apart's TypeKey); though the comments appear immediately on the site. Although this reduces the burden for the webmaster, it increases the work required by the commenter. Moderated, approved This is the tightest level of control, and only registered site users (see above) may leave a comment. All comments are still held for review by the webmaster, and do not appear immediately on the site. NB: comment-specific mechanisms such as CAPTCHA devices (the alphanumeric codes often seen beside the comment 'submit' button) may be used with any of the above setups. More on moderated, unapproved This is the recommended option, as it most closely aligns the commenter's and webmaster's requirements. The commenter can easily say whatever is on their mind, and the webmaster has final say over what is published on their site. Win-win. Unfortunately this is not always the default configuration when it comes to the numerous free - or cheap - blogging tools available. For example, I have been forced to create an account (or not to comment at all) on the following services :

Blogger
MySpace
MSN Spaces
LiveJournal

I should point out that I now use Blogger for several of my sites; however the initial reason for creating an account there was simply to comment on other blogs. As a side note, this is part of the reason for Blogger claiming that they run so many blogs - many of them were created out of necessity. Authentication services As I mentioned earlier, authentication services fall into two basic categories - site-based and CMS-based. Lets take a brief look at each. Site-based authentication As a commenter, my desire to leave a comment on a particular site must be quite high in order to register exclusively with that site. Although I occasionally do that for sites that I visit regularly, an identical approach taken by the webmasters of other sites is enough to turn me away from the site permanently. CMS-based authentication Perhaps the best known example of this is Six Apart's TypeKey service. TypeKey enables registered users to leave comments on Movable Type blogs which fall into either of the 'approved' categories listed above. Whilst reasonably simple, its mere presence creates a barrier between the commenter and webmaster which doesn't need to be there. Spam Many webmasters fall into the trap of believing that user authentication will magically make their site's spam burden disappear. Whilst user authentication can certainly reduce some types of comment spam, it also acts to dissuade users from leaving comments in the first place. If this is your intention, why have comments turned on at all? Further reading There are a number of resources covering comments and comment spam which may be of interest. The following is only a sample : Spam Fighting in Movable Type An excellent summary of the many Movable Type resources available for fighting comment spam. Blogging with or without comments? ProBlogger's Darren Rowse looks at how switching off comments actually increased traffic for Seth Godin (NB : this won't necessarily work for everyone), and asks 'Is a blog without comments still a blog?'. More on comments (Scobleizer) Comments were temporarily switched off due to a technical issue, but the last paragraph in this post is telling :

Personally I think this whole mess is just gonna go away. Everyone of you should have your own blog. If I say something idiotic, you should blog it, link to me. I watch my Technorati page and Feedster and Pubsub too. That's a much better way to comment on something I write.

More on blog comments (Steve Pavlina) This post delves a little deeper into the reasons for switching off comments (but retaining trackbacks) on stevepavlina.com. They have more to do with free time (for writing the site's content) than spam. Lifehacker's guide to weblog comments A bit of weblog comment etiquette.

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Comments

I found a great solution to blog comments -- discussion forums. I added forums to my site and have my blog set to automatically create a new forum thread whenever I made a new post. Every blog post then links to the forums. People can register for the forums in a minute, and volunteer moderators keep out spam. Visitors can start their own threads as well to take the discussion in whole new directions.

The tiny bit of effort required to register keeps out the dumb drive-by commments but encourages intelligent conversation among those who really care to discuss a post.

The forums are more powerful too -- visitors can send private messages to each other, post images, have their own signatures, etc.

Forums are just a vastly superior discussion vehicle when compared to regular blog comments.

Posted by: Steve Pavlina | November 14, 2006 1:36 PM

Steve,

I really like the way you've set up the forums on your site - as you point out, much better integration and less maintenance than most. No doubt setting it up took quite a bit of time; but the effort is well worth it.

Personally, I'm not sure of the value of adding a forum to a relatively low traffic site (say, less than 1,000 visitors per day). If you build it, will they come?

Posted by: Scott | November 14, 2006 9:17 PM