When blog comments become a problem!

This post is all about blog comments – problematic blog comments to be precise and some ideas you might find useful for dealing with them.

Ok – First things first.

Blog comments are brilliant

If you have a blog, you are going to attract comments.  In fact, comments are one of the best things about having a blog.  They often develop into extremely useful dialogues, where you and your readers get to share ideas and insights.

Comments are also where you will do most of your connecting with your readers.  This makes comments an essential part of developing your blog’s reader community.

The vast majority of comments left on blogs are constructive and add value to whatever is being discussed.  However, a minority of comments will be problematic – and that’s what this post is all about.

What are problematic blog comments?

We all have different ideas about what is and is not a problematic comment.  In my opinion, if a certain comment or type of comment is causing you a problem or it’s causing your readers a problem, then it’s problematic. Because we all have varying attitudes as to what is and what is not acceptable, it’s up to you what is classed as a problematic comment and no one else.

Also, the kind of topics you blog about will also impact the kind of comments you receive.  In other words, what’s normal on one type of blog can be seen as inappropriate on another.

For example, political blogs are often magnets for full-blown arguments.  However, the owners of political blogs know that they will attract heated exchanges because of how passionate people are about their political views.  It goes with the territory.  The same is true for blogs that cover any hotly debated topic.

I write 3 blogs and one of them almost always has some kind of extremely heated debate on it – because it’s a technology blog.  Mention that the latest Microsoft or Apple product is not that good and you better take cover! However, in the context of a tech blog, this is all part of the fun.

When blog comments become a pain in the rear

Where it stops being fun, is when either the blogger of someone in that blog’s community is either threatened or intimidated in some way.  And what about when people leave deliberately spammy comments on your blog; just to attract clicks or increase the number of links into their site?  That’s usually seen as problematic or at best irritating.

Here’s some ideas on how to handle the challenge of unwanted, problematic comments, using the various settings that come with your blog.

Note:  As I blog on the Wordpress platform, some of the terminology I use here is specific to Wordpress.  However, all blogging software comes with settings that help you manage your comments.

Blog comment moderation

The starting point of dealing with blog comments is something called moderation.

Through the moderation settings on your blog, you can decide what your blog does when certain comments arrive.  Here are the most common types of blog moderation and what they do.

Registered users only

The first option I am going to discuss is registered users only.  This is when someone has to register their name and email address with you, before they can leave a comment.  Once they have registered, their comments are posted live immediately.

This is an increasingly popular way to manage blog comments, as it has a number of benefits.  For example, it eliminates spam because spammers don’t register.  It also removes the anonymity that some people hide behind, when making threatening or intimidating comments.  As a result, ‘registered user’ moderation is also very popular with blogs that cover highly contentious subjects.

On the downside, registered user blogs get fewer comments from casual readers.  People are busy and may not consider it worthwhile to register with a blog to post just one comment.  Equally, when a blog is starting out, it can also be a real challenge to encourage the first people that it’s worth registering, as there’s very little happening in the comments section.

If you want to use the ‘registered user’ model, I strongly recommend starting off with a more open moderation policy.  This will allow you to get more content on your blog and thus make it easier for people to see the value in registering.

Full moderation

The next option is called full moderation.  This is when every comment sent to your blog is held for you to check it out, before you allow it to be published.

Whilst this is an effective way to totally eliminate spam and stop any problematic comments from being published on your blog, it has one massive drawback!

It can kill the conversation on your blog before it begins.

Here’s why.

If you write a post, which quickly attracts 4 comments.  All 4 comments get held for moderation.  This means none of the commenters will be able to see what any of the other 3 have written, until YOU have logged into your blog and manually moderated all the comments.

So, you end up with 4 individual comments, none of which will refer to any of the other 3.  Net result: 4 broadcasts and no conversation.

If comments are important to you and you want to encourage them, I suggest you skip full moderation.

Part moderation

The next option, (which I currently use here), is called partial moderation.  This is where you only hold a set number of comments from someone for moderation, usually just 1 or 2.  After that, all their comments are posted instantly.

This has a couple of benefits over full moderation.

Firstly, it allows the conversation to flow. This is because most of your commenters will be regular or semi-regular contributors to your blog.  This blog is just a few weeks old and already has a dozen or so regular contributors; all of whom can comment here instantly.

Secondly, it is a terrific way to stop comment spam.  Although I use anti-spam software on my blogs, (I use a plugin called Akismet), the occasional spam comment gets through.  These are easy to spot and can be deleted using the partial moderation system.

Unmoderated blog comments

You can also choose for every comment, from every person, to be posted immediately to your blog.  Then, you have the option to post moderate.  This is when you delete a comment after it’s been posted to your blog.  This is only really an option of you check your blog very regularly and are ok about the occasional ‘dodgy’ comment being left on your blog in between your checks.

Lots of people use the unmoderated option. However, it’s entirely possible that links to porn or other unwanted sites could remain live on your blog for hours or maybe days – depending on how often you check the comments.

It’s your call and if you check your blog regularly enough, it may be worth considering.  Some ’social media gurus’ advocate the unmoderated approach, as they feel it encourages openness. Like I say, it’s your call.

If you do choose this option, I strongly recommend you set your blog, so that it emails you whenever a comment has been received.  That way, if something particularly problematic is posted, you can catch it ‘on the fly’ and get it deleted.

Comment blacklist and moderation queue

Whatever moderation option you choose, you can also block certain individuals or block posts that have certain words or URL’s in them.  This is known (in Wordpress) as the comment blacklist / moderation queue.

Here’s a couple of examples of how it works.  By the way, you can use this approach to moderate or block comments even if you opt to have an unmoderated blog.

If you don’t want people swearing / using curse words in their comments, simply enter all the words you want to block and whenever a comment comes in that contains any of those words, it will be held for you to approve or delete.

Equally, if a certain person is posting content to your comments section that you don’t want – you can enter their ip address into the moderation queue or blacklist and anything they send from that ip address will be blocked for your approval.  You can do the same with email addresses or URL’s too.

On Wordpress blogs, you can also block comments from being published if they contain a certain number of links.  A regular feature of spam comments is that they contain lots of links to the spammers websites, sometimes dozens.  By telling Wordpress to ‘quarantine’ everything with 2 or more links in it, you will cut down on the amount of spam that gets through.

As you can see, even if your blog is unmoderated, you can still catch the vast majority of the problematic comments using the comment moderation queue and black list settings.

Try to let as much through as possible

I believe you should use the strategy that allows as many comments through as possible.  This includes comments that are either negative / critical about what you have just written and comments that are argumentative.

The whole point of offering people the chance to comment on your blog, is to encourage a wide range of opinions and feedback.  The more diverse this feedback is, the more interesting and valuable your comments section will become.

When I say comments can be valuable, I have written many posts where the comments were better than the original post I wrote! No matter how good a writer you are, if you are moderating your blog correctly, this will happen to you too. It’s also a sure indicator that your moderation strategy is working.

Between them, my blogs have currently attracted almost 10,000 comments and if you were one of those commenters, I thank you!

How do you manage the comments on your blog?

I would love to know what kind of approach you use on your blog and what the results have been.  If you want to share your feedback, please leave a comment!