The Edublogger

16 responses so far ↓

• 1    Ken Allan // May 11, 2008 at 3:04 am

  My Goodness Sue, you’ve done it again!

  Yet another splendidly informative posting. I’ll be using your techniques

  I’ve altered my Blogger settings, thanks. I will expect to see the comments pouring in

  Hmm.

  I wondered about all this at various times when accessing other blogs. Any other helpful suggestions about Blogger settings would be Gr8!

  Ka kite ano
  Blogger in Middle-earth

• 2    Elona // May 11, 2008 at 4:39 am

  Sue,
  Great post. It made me examine why I chose to moderate the comments on my blog.

  I guess I was afraid that someone would say something inappropriate, but after almost two years of blogging that has only happened once.

  Now I go get lots and lots of spam and a small portion gets through and is waiting for me to approve it. So, if I decided against comment moderation I guess that the spam would appear.

  I don’t want that to happen because it would be annoying to everyone- me as well as visitors to my blog. Imagine having to wade through spam.

  I think that I’ll respect the visitors to my blog by checking the box that says a commenter must have a previously approved comment, or maybe I should ask for an anti spam word, but I don’t know how to do that. Perhaps you could show us and then I would choose that option.

  thanks

• 3    dogtrax // May 11, 2008 at 5:58 am

  As you know, I am mulling over my moderation methods (nice alliteration, eh?)
  So, your post here is helpful.

  My pet peeve is one you list: the Google/Blogger one, in which you must be part of their umbrella to comment. I do have a Blogger account, which is just an empty vessel so that I can comment on these blogs, but that seems foolish.

  Thanks for your tutorial (again)
  Kevin

• 4    Christine Martell // May 11, 2008 at 6:59 am

  Sue,
  I moderate first time comments, but only because enough spam gets through to make me want to keep doing it. As a business I really don’t want inappropriate things posted on my blog for even a few hours. To me that would send a message that I wasn’t being careful enough with security and things like that.

  If I had a personal blog, I think I would be less concerned. My sense is people are much more forgiving with those.

• 5    Claire Thompson // May 11, 2008 at 7:01 am

  Hi Sue, thanks for linking to my post I’m definitely going to have to re-think my settings. Right now I have ‘Comment Author Must Have A Previously Approved Comment’ selected. I like it in that I’m alerted when I have a brand new commenter, but if it is a deterrent for others to comment then I’m missing out.

• 6    Diane Hammond // May 11, 2008 at 7:47 am

  Sue, I may be the lone voice in the woods here but I wouldn’t consider turning off comment moderation for even one minute. Spam is insidious!!! Except for our Space Station Project where we designed the collaborative learning environment ourselves, all of my project blogs run on Wordpress with the Akismet Spam plugin running in the background. Akismet is pretty good - 432 pieces of spam caught on four project blogs yesterday alone! Yet I still find seemingly innocuous messages linking back to very inappropriate sites sitting in the moderation queue. I don’t want to take any chances of having my work linked with those sites as the RSS feed propagates its way throughout the blogsphere. I’m online 24/7, (sometimes it feels that way), so it’s easy for me to quickly deal with the moderation queue. This is my last line of defense!

• 7    Cathy Nelson // May 11, 2008 at 8:41 am

  Sue–my goodness, you may have just sold edublogs on MANY blogger devotees! Nice and helpful post. Glad to report I was in line with all except moderation. The educator who likes her job just can’t fathom not moderating. Thankfully I’ve never lost a comment to a long que in moderation.

  Here’s a feature I’d like to see. I would like to see a tick for emailing the commenter when you “comment” back. (Not the same as ticking email me of follow up….) For a long time I though Doug Johnson of the Blue Skunk Blog had this feature in his blogging platform, because i always got an email of his comment back if I commented on a post he wrote. I finally asked, and he said no special feature, just good manners is why the email came….LOL.

• 8    Sarah Hanawald // May 11, 2008 at 3:41 pm

  Sue–another great post that helps newbies like me. I didn’t realize that my settings were preventing comments, or at least preventing anonymous ones. So, I’ve changed my settings and I’m waiting for the comments to roll in as I try to follow Michelle Martin’s tips on why people aren’t commenting on your blogs.

  Sarah
  ps–Technorati still hates me. Why?

• 9    michael chalk // May 12, 2008 at 1:11 am

  Thanks Sue for your strong opinions ;-]

  i have a personal blog with google/blogger, and recently i’ve turned on the comment moderation, because all i’m getting in the way of comments is ads from registered google users (spam really, but individually keyed in).

  (You can allow anonymous comments under the blogger umbrella, i’m sure .. and haven’t they just upgraded to allow OpenID as well?)

  With my work-related blog, i use wordpress, so the spam protection is much stronger. Still i’ve never had enough comments to need moderation. And i’m such a half-hearted blogger anyway.

  i agree with Diane about the RSS feed for comments .. you can delete pseudo-spam that gets through .. but it remains in the feed.

  Very thought-provoking post, the issues have plenty of grey shades. (and yes, i am planning to switch to wordpress, and halve the number of neglected blogs.)

  thanks, michael

• 10    Sue Waters // May 12, 2008 at 2:44 am

  @Ken Glad my post has helped you again . Its good to see you get into blogging and enjoying the Comment Challenge. I’ve sent an email with some links for you to check out that should help re your other questions.

  @Elona I can totally understand concerns about spam as my podcast site is being massively hit daily by spam and the company doesn’t seem able to sort it out. The good news for people using Edublogs is the antispam plugin catches most of the spam. You are using Wordpress self hosted which is slightly different from using Wordpress on Edublogs (as we can only use the plugins that come with an Edublogs blog). You need to check out what plugins are worth installing.

  @Kevin (Dogtrax) I hope that people sharing their thoughts on the pros and cons of comment moderation. One option with blogger is to edit your profile so that when someone clicks on your link it tells them the location of your blog (wish blogger just made it easier for us).

  @Christine Good point as why its worth moderating first time comments especially on professional blogs. You use self hosted Wordpress — are you able to suggest to Elona which plugins would help her with Antispam?

  @Claire When I first started blogging I had an experienced blogger caught out by the moderation of first time commenters. Since then I’ve not moderated comments. I’ve not had problems (yet) with inappropriate comments but do have issues with spam links.

  @Diane I don’t think you are the lone voice regarding comment moderation. Plus its important that you shared the reasons why you moderate comments because they are Very valid reasons. I’d rather we debated the issues because its important to make an informed choice based on the pros and cons.

  @Cathy Its a shame that we have to worry about inappropriate comments by readers causing us to lose our job. But definitely is another valid pro for moderating comments. I’d really love to see a tick for easy emailing the comment — Typepad looks like it uses it.

  @Sarah I would also recommend you read my Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? plus readers tips in the comments. Commenting is a mixture of the types of blogs your write, the blogging skills you use to make it easier for people to read your posts and provoke response but building your blog’s community.

  Wow never seen a 403 Forbidden on Technorati. The good news is Technorati isn’t just doing this to you. Appears to be an issue with Blogspot blogs recently. Here is technorati’s response:

  Hello all,

  It does seem there was something amiss with Blogspot blogs recently. All looks to be in order now. If you initiate a ping to Technorati, we should be able to reindex your blog and pick up your title successfully again. Thanks for using the forum!

  Technorati Support

  SO I suggest you log into technorati and click on ping to ping your blog. I’m finding I am having to ping my blog each time I write a new post.

  @Michael Yes I’ve noticed in the past few days blogspot blogs having some issue with spam (may be similar to the problems that I have on podomatic). At least on our blogs its an easy process to delete spam comments whereas it isn’t on podomatic.

  Good point about deleted comments still showing in the comment feed and email notifications. And if there was concerns of inappropriate comments I would definitely turn on comment moderation. Totally agree with you that there are plenty of grey shades in these issues. I’m going to edit my post to state “my personal belief is I don’t recommend comment moderation however please refer to the readers comments as many have raised very valid reasons why you would moderate comments”.

• 11    Ken Allan // May 12, 2008 at 2:53 am

  @Sue - Thanks for the links. I will peruse them when I’ve written my blog policy!
  

  Ka kite

• 12    inpi // May 12, 2008 at 12:35 pm

  @Sue Waters and @Everyone, thank you for all these important information and reflections.
  “I didn’t realize that my settings were preventing comments” - neither did I, so I have already turned off that option.
  I didn’t even know about the urgency of using anti-spam akismet.
  for “you can delete pseudo-spam that gets through…but it remains in the feed.”
  I’ll return to my blog and I’ll do it; I understand I must find my API key first.
  By the way, I’ve tried to embed the new 08badge for K12Online 08 conference, but it didn’t work on my blog; I’ll also try with Comment Challenge badge; perhaps it will only work if I become an edublogger’s supporter, which is ok with me.
  As for comment moderation, after reading all different reasons pro and con, I decided to keep moderation as it was set by default.
  I notice first names at the bottom of comments; I should read about “etiquette” before commenting; any way, my first name is Ines and it is a pleasure to be with you.

• 13    Comment Challenge Day 12: Make Sure Your Blog Technology is “Comment Friendly” « (No Longer) Alone in a Library // May 12, 2008 at 3:48 pm

  […] comments at other blogs and make sure that your blog isn’t having these problems. Also review Sue Waters’ post on the matter. Then see what you can do to address any of these issues on your own […]

• 14    Marie // May 12, 2008 at 9:19 pm

  Great post as usual Sue. I think the wost anti-spam I have come across is at yahoo … sometimes I have to scroll through half a dozen or so to get it right; don’t know why they make it so hard; the letters are merged together and hard to differentiate.

• 15    Marie // May 13, 2008 at 8:16 pm

  Just as I was thinking of removing the moderator check, I received an inappropriate message on my blog … so seems safest to keep moderation going.

• 16    31 Day Comment Challenge: Becoming a Better Blog Citizen « Curious Child’s Library Wanderings // May 14, 2008 at 3:33 pm

  […] think my blog technology is “comment friendly” although I do have one of the pet peeves in place:  comment moderation.  My reason for commenting is purely selfish but that’s all a […]

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