We love blogs. That is not a secret that we have as we make it known on a regular basis. What we love about them is the open feedback model. Discussions that take place can be so beneficial to the organization because it usually provides an opportunity to learn directly from your audience. We can’t tell you the amount of knowledge that has been passed on to us by our readers and it is all because we allow comments on our site.
The downside of having an open comment system is that sooner or later, if your site is fairly popular, you are bound to get spammed. Spammers harness the power of blogs and especially Google’s love of blogs to hit blogs constantly with spam attacks just to up their rankings in the search engine.
Glaser Online has an article titled, Bloggers Declare War on Comment Spam, but Can They Win? This article goes into the struggles that bloggers and makers of blogging software have encountered dealing with spammers. There are plenty of solutions available to combat spammers, but one solution — turning comments off — will cost a site (and a company) more than having to spend resources to moderate comments and deal with comment spammers.
The problem with comments, open forums, e-mail discussion lists and other user-generated online content is that it takes work — usually a moderator or trust system — to make sure the comments stay relevant, clean and spam-free.
The thing is, this takes work. To everyone reading this entry let me inform you now that if you want a successful site it is going to take work. The problem isn’t the comments, it’s the people who don’t take the time to read comments on their own sites and allow spammers to hit their sites.
If you continue to read the Glaser article you will see some relevant information, but nothing really new until you reach the part where Dave Winer starts to speak. This is the same Dave Winer who knocked 3000 bloggers out of commission not too long ago (now fixed) and for some reason Glaser labels him the “Godfather of blogging.” In any case here is what Dave thinks about comments:
“I think a blog is a publication, and publications have proven that letters to the editor are useful,” Winer said. “But blogs with comments are not letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are edited, they’re selected, and that selection process is a very important aspect of it.”
Instead, Winer thinks commenters should simply run their own blog if they want to comment.
I can only assume that Winer has formed this opinion from his personal experiences, but don’t let his view, however “informed” convince you this is always a good idea. If you are unaware of who Dave is and his past exploits, just know that he is one of those people that are either really loved or really hated on the web. This could be why someone of his caliber would be hesitant to include comments on their site.
However, what would happen if someone like Scoble were to remove comments from his site and expect to receive feedback only from other people who have blogs? It wouldn’t be half as successful as it is now because the majority of his site is focused around the ensuing discussions that occur within the comments.
I am not suggesting that comments should be open for every site, but to write them off completely for all sites is absurd.
Comments are the first line of feedback that your company can receive. You may worry about comments that reflect negatively upon your company, but it is better to have those comments followed by great responses by your team than to allow no comments and learn nothing of how people perceive you.
About Mike Rundle
I completely and utterly agree… comments are the best way to keep in touch with your audience. It’s the kind of two way communication that’s sorely needed (IMHO) by most organisations. I’m surprised that more companies aren’t capitalizing on the current blogging phenomenon and a live commenting system.
That said, while the cost of moderating a comment system may be high, there are ways to have users self moderate themselves (through a confirmation email, perhaps). This would significantly reduce the cost of moderation. Of course, making it more difficult to post comments could turn off some users, but that’s a drawback as there is with everything. The companies just have to decide which method would cost less and implement that. Either way, having a comment system is much more beneficial than having not having one.
Exactly. Jason Calacanis (Weblogs, Inc.) has a feature that requires you to confirm your comments through an email system. Although this is good moderation and spam filtering technique, it’s bad for real-time discussions that can occur on some blogs.
For me I think blacklisting and moderation are the best ways of keeping a clean comment system intact on a site.
I think that it highly depends on which audience you have and how the use the comment system.
I know sites where comments are just that: comments, single statements and nothing more. In this scenario mail-confirmation or a text-as-a-graphic which has to be retyped might be best.
I know other sites where you don’t just comment, you discuss, read the comments with the same (or more) concentration as the article, you ask and answer. As you said, Paul, this is where … let’s call it a “human-based-discussion-and- moderating-system” might be the thing to do.
If you manage to get such an audience, one that discusses, the next problem may arise: The comment moderation will become a part of the blog. The tone used and the actions done while moderating can — and most likely will — have an impact on how the company is seen from the outside.
I will get more personal, sure. However, personal thing are more complicated.
I could go on for a while with this thoughts, sorry for being lengthy. This is just one of those questions where you can clearly and without any doubt answer “it depends”.
Hehe, funny you should mention Dave and removing comments. I posted a comment on one of this photos that he took while here in British Columbia. A person had commented that his photos looked pretty generic and nothing special. I replied to this person’s comment that the shots were not bad, it was primarily the composition that was the problem. For example, he had a great shot of the mountains with the mist coming down from them but most of the shot encompassed the highway he was driving on. I said if he had just tilted his camera up slightly, he would have probably got a better shot. Well, guess what. I went back a day or so later to see if Dave had responded and poof, no more comments. Or should I say my post along with the other person’s post (aka comments construed as negative) were removed while others that didn’t speak “negatively” weren’t. :)
Unfortunately that is what he is known for and for obvious reasons I just don’t think it’s right.
And yes Matthias it highly depends on the purpose of the blog as to whether you should have a comment system in place or not.
For example, John Gruber doesn’t have comments enabled and I am sure many people would think that this is the perfect site to enable them. On the contrary the topic that he focuses on, Apple, is such a religious thing that I could see every discussion simply turning into a major flamewar only entertaining to those who are involved.
Paul, interesting topic for sure. I’ve found that I am getting more and more comment spam as times goes on (I think I erased 60 or so yesterday alone).
One other system, that I think worth mentioning (plug coming) is a karma-based solution. Today, we launched a site, politics.relevanta.com, and it’s completely community driven.
The way we deal with the SPAM issue is that community members earn rights in the system. When you start out, you don’t have many permissions. By rating other items and commenting on them you gain reputation in the community.
In addition, we also have what we call CP, which are your credits. This is a daily allowance you are given for performing various tasks in the site. Over time, your allowance gets bigger as your reputation becomes more established. This really keeps the trolls and spammers out.
I should mention that this relies on an authenticated community, which already is a fairly good barrier to entry.
That does seem like a good system Gregory and I will make sure to keep an eye on it to see how it develops. The only downside to systems like this (and any automated system in general) is that it is suspect to tampering. Once people figure out the system there is usually very little to prevent them from abusing the system (eg. Google search results).
Authentication does seem like the best approach though.
A week has passed but here’s my thoughts…Comments allow people of similar interests who would probably never meet to have a discussion. The internet first allowed people to distribute information to a global network. Now, through blogs and comments the process is complete as the flow of information has become two-way. I’m sure this aspect of the internet is going to be one of its greatest contributions to culture. Never before could people with such specialized interests form a group and exchange ideas.
Also, I like Greg’s community driven model where membership privileges are progressive. Isn’t that how it is in most groups elsewhere? I think it’s a natural way to build a community. That’s something worth keeping an eye on.