Commenting 101

Quick sidebar before we get into today’s post: Have you seen the cute little ‘me’ over there in my sidebar? Tell me she’s not adorable. I think she and her sweet smile balance the bitch that’s flicking you off ‘me’ in the header out very nicely. Renée posted about the super talented Emila who makes the little things, tailored to look like you. They are only $2. She finishes them really quickly [I had mine in just a few hours].  Go get one!

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Yesterday we covered blogging. Remember folks that these are just my personal wants for the way the blog world works. I’m not saying that I think you should change your entire way of going about things just because of what you read here. Take it all with a grain of salt. Tell me where your opinions differ, and why.

Today…

Commenting

1. Do not jump around from blog to blog commenting posts in the hopes that everyone will pay you a return visit. It’s tacky, and it’s usually very obvious. If you’re that interested in accumulating comments, I suggest a site like this, where that is everyone else’s intention as well and it’s put out there really plainly: pure reciprocation, and true promotion for your blog.  That site even provides a sense of community which I think it’s pretty cool. And remember that comments do not indicate traffic. You can have a huge amount of traffic and little comments or vice versa.

2. Do not feel pressured to reply to every comment you get. I used to do it before I realized that it would probably mean more to each person if I commented back only when I had something valid and worthwhile to say, rather than respond to everything with a generic or insincere line just for the fuck of it. So I stopped.  Doing that also makes it seem like you want to continue the conversation further so they’ll probably email you back and then expect something from you, which you don’t send because you’re overwhelmed from responding to all the other comments you have, or didn’t really want to comment back in the first place. Believe me – it’s a better idea to just save your words for when you really *want* to use them.

Oh, and those auto-responders? The ones that email you to say ‘Thank you for commenting and here’s how to subscribe!’? They are fine for the first comment a person leaves, but for every comment? That’s fucking INSULTING. If you were goddamn Dooce that shit would be insulting. And you’re not. So there.

3. READ the post. This sort of goes along with the number one in this post. DO NOT comment if you didn’t read it. Take for instance Raw Dawg  Buffalo. He gets a decent number of comments on each of his posts. It’s more than obvious to me that he doesn’t read my posts here – he skims, picks a line and addresses it.  If there’s a picture involved he usually sticks to commenting on that. I’m convinced that he picks a day out of the week and goes down his reader or blogroll and just leaves a comment for everyone there, trying to get it done quick and painlessly, with little effort.  Whether it’s to maintain his own comment numbers, or out of true desire to acknowledge his readers although he has limited time to do so, I don’t know.

Example? A recent guest post by an anonymous person who shared a painful story about their mother’s abusive boyfriend. He commented only on my disclaimer about it being a rented post. ‘Rentablog.com. Classic‘ was all he said. How disrespectful to my guest poster was that? Very, in my opinion. And yes, I am calling him out, but he’s a grown man. He can handle it. I doubt he actually reads this far in though, unless it’s because he sees he’s been linked. Heh.

4. If you reply on post pages, fine. I used to do this too, but then I realized how it was hard to remember to go back and check for their reply without subscribing to their comments which I’ve never, ever done. I get enough email, I’d prefer not to opt into more. If someone asks you a direct question – reply via email if they left a way to do so. Not everyone wants to, or has the time to check back and find your response.

5. Don’t talk too much about yourself in other people’s comments. Definitely not too much about your own blog. It’s perfectly acceptable to tell them how you’ve shared a similar experience or thought as the one they shared in their post, but to write a novella in their comments about you, your kids, or your blog is rude. It’s NOT YOUR BLOG. If they inspired you that much feel free to write a post on your own blog that starts with line like ‘Maria talked about XXX yesterday and instead of potentially looking like a narcissistic asshole on her blog, I decided to write a post on it too.‘

Edit: I believe #5 is being misunderstood. I’m not saying you should not, or should never talk about yourself. Just that your comment on someone else’s post shouldn’t be something that you could cut and paste onto your own blog (ie., long and not really about the post, or your views on it, but only you). It’s good to talk about yourself, I want you to talk about yourself here. Hence, why I’m doing the questions thing. But there’s overdoing it, in my opinion.

6. Do not go to someone’s blog as a thanks for visiting yours and say ‘I just wanted to thank you for stopping by my blog! Bye!‘ It’s rude. It sounds like that’s the only reason you came by and you truly don’t give a shit about their blog. If that’s all that you find is worth commenting on then don’t. Simple thank you’s are best handled via email and if they didn’t leave one, too bad.

The only time I do anything remotely similar to that is when I guest post, because I know most of the time I don’t read guest posts, and I assume others don’t either since it’s not what they came for. So, if I guest post, I’ll make sure to visit each person that commented on it. I comment on the actual content of the entry, and end the comment with ‘thanks for commenting on my guest post @ XXX.’ There’s the big thing there: not making the comment all about you by solely thanking them for reading your words whether on your blog or someone else’s.

No, I am not saying that I think if you guest somewhere you should do this – this is just something I do because when I see a guest post in my reader I usually hit ‘mark as read’ and I’m trying to maintain my own blog karma. In my head. Shut up.

7. State your commenting policy upfront. That’s especially useful to me because I curse a lot, and it’s useful to know if I can do so in your comments or not. So far, I’ve only slipped once with a big f-bomb in Momo’s comments and she kindly notified me of why she deleted it. I completely understood and respected that.  You can make people aware of what flies and what doesn’t at your spot very easily with one of these badges.

I don’t have a badge simply because anything goes in my comments. But, I tell you very plainly in my Exegesis section that I don’t delete comments.  I don’t know why, I just don’t. Maybe I will change that in the future, I don’t know. I have blocked an i.p. address, but that was because I had a non-blog ‘friend’ that commented only to attack the other commentators, and I asked him very nicely to stop doing it during a conversation we had. Then I discovered that the only real ‘troll’ I’ve ever had around here was commenting from the same exact IP. So I blocked that IP. I don’t play games. That shit was stupid. He claimed that it wasn’t him, it was a coworker he had recommended my blog to, but I never spoke to him again. I figure if it really was that, he could comment from home and so could they. I haven’t heard from ‘them’ since.’

8. Use a name, or a pseudonym. Posting under anonymous, even when it’s not a negative comment is annoying and it makes your comment mean less, no matter what it says.

9. Enable either comment moderation or CAPTCHA on your blog. I really don’t understand why you need both. If you’re moderating, don’t you have to approve everything anyway? Would it really be that much more of a hassle to delete spam? For the record: I HATE CAPTCHA. You won’t see it here. Ever. I swear it. I’m determined that the only true purpose of CAPTCHA is to prove to me that I’m dyslexic or blind. I never get that shit right the first try.

*Tomorrow, Basic Etiquette 101

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