I Love Comments. Usually.
Any blogger likes to login and see a lot of well-crafted comments waiting to be approved. I like to know people are reading my articles and that they feel compelled to add a thought or two to the topic.
But, I have also gone out of my way to reward readers who comment by giving them solid outgoing links. I have removed the No Follow from my comments, making any link you leave in a comment an outbound link. And, I have a list in my sidebar that gives an outbound link to my top 10 5 commentators.
Therefore, I expect a little something in return. I expect the comments you leave on my blog to be thoughtful and of substance. And, I expect the sites you link to have original content, not be ad farms, and not be an obvious attempt to fill the internet with yet more spam. If I see links like that, I will let the comments through, but I will strip out the links.
Fair is fair.
Do you have the askimet plugin installed to pull out spam comments automatically? I tried the approval method for comments and found it took to much over head to go through all the comments. I just auto-approve now but have it send an email. If I see a comment that slips through the filter of the comment is bogus I’ll delete it.
I have not installed it yet. So far I am OK with the hand approvals in this blog, since I get so little spam (wish I could say the same for my other blogs!). I will eventually install it, though.
I totally agree, I also strip out the links for comments made on earsucker. People should contribute something that is worthwhile to the conversation, it’s a two-way street.
Oh yeah, Akismet is awesome.
Now, you know I have nothing to add. Nothing. But I will comment. Yes, I will…I will babble about everything under the sun. I will tell you that JMV is back and he’s got a new haircut that I am not particularly fond of. He got the Mike Brady perm. That’s all I have to tell you.
I love the Akismet plugin. I get so many spam comments a day it’s ridiculous.
I wanted to Thank you for telling me about the top commentator plugin. I installed it this morning. Works like a charm.
I also have the top commentators plug in, but I don’t have it activated. How do you get it so you aren’t your top commentor?? I would happily install mine if I didn’t show up with that crazy number at the top. LOL….
I also do link stripping and such on comments that slip through. I use the Akismet plugin and moderate first comments by an e-mail.
I love your site. You are a terrific writer. Thanks for doing it.
I know you can tweak the plugin all kinds of ways, including how many commentators show, how long the reset time is and if you show or not. I left mine as it was written, because I did not know how to play with the customization. I see I do not show on my own, though. Huh. Maybe it is the version of the plugin I used.
This is how you take out you from the top commentator list. You open up the plugin editor in wordpress and you will chose Top Commentator or whatever it says..you will go down til you see this line and insert your name you use on your wordpress and after admin insert a comma and then your name. You can add as many names as you want to just make sure to put the comma between them. Does that make sense?
“filter_users” => “Administrator,admin,YOUR NAME”, //commma seperated list of users (”nate,jeff,etc”).
[...] Angie usually loves comments. [...]
I downloaded this one yesterday, but I use widgets and couldn’t get it to work in a widget. I don’t know…
I had a different version of top commentators installed that I got to work, but had me at top with like 654 comments or some crazy number. Made me feel weird…LOL..
If your looking to improve your comments section, I recommend using the threaded comments plugin. It gives your comments the ability to facilitate multiple dialogs.
[...] has a great post over at SunCoastScribe about comments. Check that [...]
Hey congrats on making the weekly list on Pureblogging.
Yes we all love some good comments, and spam does get a little tiresome. I actually just activitated the the askimet last month after I got tired of going through nearly 200 spam comments a day.
It does do wonders.
Sassy – Thanks for the details. I will look at mine. I was just intimidated by the instruction that I needed to “chmod show_top_commentators.php to 777″. ???
Jennifer – I imagine there are a handful of versions floating around. Seems like that would be a fix most people would want to have. Plus, I like that the one I use can reset. Mine resets at 30 days.
Jason – Threaded comments is absolutely on my To Do list. I think there may have been some intimidation for me on that one, too. Extra steps and some backup I need to plan time for.
I also love logging into my admin panel and seeing some comment there! Although I do hate spam!
I use Spam Karma to zap the pesky spam comments. Any comment with more than one link in it gets zapped (unless you are a regular commenter, then you have some karma to your name!). I love it and it hasn’t been wrong yet.