Listen up, John Chow, Jack Humphrey, Matthew Henrickson, Andy Beard, and the rest of you lazy and/or inept bloggers out there:
I am tired of wasting my time on broken comment forms, screwball captchas, lazy moderation, and bad site design.
Too many times in the past 2 weeks, I have tried to make comments on blogs that ended up sucked into cyberspace and never making it to its destination, which is the post in which I was commenting on.
On three blogs, after taking the time to formulate an informative, relevant, quality comment (one of them was at least an hour of work), it was just sucked away after clicking the submit button, with no indication that it made it to where it was supposed to go, or it being held for moderation, or anything else. Will I ever grace those blogs with another comment again? No!
On another blog, after almost the same amount of work and hitting the submit button, I was informed that commenting on that post was closed. Why was there a comment form then? And why was there no visible indication that commenting was closed that I could see, before I wasted my time putting together a comment? Will I ever grace that blog with another comment? No!
On another blog, after I took the time to make a comment thanking the blogger for his post and tell him how useful it was to me and why, and how I was going to send him some traffic because it was that damn good, his captcha informs me that I must have flunked math in school because 4+3 does not equal 7. Don't insult me like that. I try to compliment you and thank you, and this is the thanks I get? A screwball captcha that calls me an idiot? Will I ever comment on your blog again? No!
On another two blogs, my comment was being held for moderation. Now I can understand the need to do that in order to keep spammers at bay, but don't you think you should check your queue to see if any comments were made, at least once a week, if not more often? Maybe even check it when you are making a new post, at least. Will I be commenting on those blogs again? No!
I am tired of wasting chunks of my life trying to comment unsucessfully on your blogs.
So to all you bloggers out there, please check to make sure your comment forms and captchas work, when commenting is closed that it is visibly closed to your visitors before they waste their time (remove the form if possible), if comments are being held for moderation that commentors are told this, and process your comment moderation queues on a regular basis!
And if you have no clue what you are doing or how to fix things, ask someone to help you!
16 comments:
A quality post and one where I can actually see you seething at the screen shaking your fist repeatedly.
If I had a shiny penny for the countless times I have gone to write something constructive and rather witty if I do say so myself and have been thrown into the ether, I would be able to afford better branded tea bags, full fat milk and bigger biscuits, so I can read and comment on said blogs more enjoyably.
I tend to skim through the next blog on the Nav Bar and find a lot of blogs here on Blogger where people haven't posted in weeks or months. How many of those have comment moderation I wonder and how many comments are stranded.
Maybe that's part of the problem which ties in with your U Comment, I Comment post. Because blogs don't have any people commenting, they leave them unattended and forgotten with the moderation in place. Maybe they have had an accident with a roller skate and a set of self assembly shelves and are absent from their PC's - we shall never truly know what goes on in the bloggers mind when they annoy us with these forms.
I am continually frustrated and thwarted by peoples ineptness to update these parts of their blog, though I do tend to find myself copying what I've written to the clipboard these days, because it is becoming far more prevalent.
I am a night person that lives in an apartment building, over someone else. If I get angry while in a seated position, I sometimes stomp my feet, rather than shake my fists. I have had to shove a pillow under my desk to keep from disturbing my downstairs neighbor.
I don't limit myself to blogspot blog browsing, and I never use that bar. As a matter of fact, I have bumped into too many nasty blogs that way, loaded with popups and other crap that seems to be able to bypass even the best, multiple popup blockers.
I also stick to blogs in which the authors are still active and have posted within the last week, even if the post I will be commenting on is a bit older.
All of the blogs I have had issues with that are mentioned in my post were Wordpress blogs...not Blogger.
On the blogs in which my comment was/is still being held for moderation, the authors of the blogs have made posts since my comment was made.
One of the blogs that just sucked my comment away mysteriously, with no indication where it went...was about how awful blogspot is and how everyone should ditch it and buy their own domain name and use Wordpress instead...and listed many reasons why that was suppoosed to be better, as if it were a one-size-fits-all solution.
For each misinformed statement that they had made, was a polite correction, explaining how it could be done on Blogspot.
The one virtue of Blogger blogs that I forgot to add, and didn't think I was going to have to at that moment, was how Blogger comment forms actually work properly and don't suck your comments into a black hole.
I was almost tempted to try commenting a 2nd time in a row, just to add that.
I should have.
I still might. >:]
But it would be a waste of more of my time if that got sucked away, as well.
aww...fuckit! They don't deserve my time.
Well I definitely do apologize for having a problem commenting on our blog. That is one of the most important things to me is comments,which is why we do our comment friday to communicate and converse with our readers.
This is why I dont have captcha or anything like that, and I only close comments on contest posts etc.
However, do to so much spam (literally 100s of spam comments per day) we do have to do moderation. Which means unfortunately that sometimes that our great comments get sucked up as spam.
Matthew, with all due respect, if you are holding comments for moderation, there should be a visible indicator to the visitor that says "Your comment is being held for moderation" after they hit the submit button. How else are we supposed to know?
Additionally, even after reading my post here, and being aware that I have made a comment, and given enough information to identify both the post I made it on and the comment in question, it STILL doesn't appear on your page.
Almost 3 hours after you have commented here and it still isn't there.
Why is that?
Maybe with our theme change it doesnt say that, Im not sure, as we just changed themes a week or two ago.
I tried searching for your comment and couldn't find one.
Maybe if you let me know what you commented as, along with the post I could find it.
I always comment as who I am...app.
This is the post I commented on.
It was a rather long & detailed comment. You can't miss it...unless it really did get sucked into a black hole.
This article is spot on. Maybe you should create a blog for Slackerblog owners. It really does suck when you've invested time to comment and see it sucked into oblivion.
Now my comment is being held :(
Matthew, on what blog? yours?
It certainly wouldn't be on mine. I don't have moderation enabled. ;-)
I don't have a need for that...yet.
Matthew, thank you for finding my comment and finally getting it out of your moderation queue.
Hopefully you have also fixed the issue with it not telling people that their comment is being held for moderation. That is a very important issue to fix, in my opinion. I think my frustration would have been much less if I had been told what had happened to my comment, when I clicked that submit button.
Such a good point that I shall immediately remove comment moderation and see what happens. After all, I get all comments in my email, so it's not like spam will stay up long.
Oh, and thanks for trying to comment - please see if you can find the Dole Letter. Oh, and two other things, gleaned in passing: you can always use anything you find (with credit) at zazzle.com as a blog illustration, if you are an associate, at least.
Same for Cafepress or any other such thing. Handy, because it's relevant and permissioned.
As for Project Wonderful graphics - believe it or not, I suggest the same thing. Simply create a square format product on zazzle, keep it private, and use the "link to this" to link to the design image.
That allows you to create a multi-colored text-based image on any background color. Pretty damn cool, takes about a minute, and if it's worth saying - it's worth wearing. :P
Not that it always works - but sometimes it does. I've sold exactly one of these, but I use it as a blog illustration all the time. "Don't Poke the Aspie"
Oh, IRT what you wrote: EMAIL FORMS , people that don't have comments at all, or those MSM comment areas that don't permit links of any sort on the assumption that you are therefore "spamming them."
...in competition with THEIR ads.
They don't get comments either. Not, at least, on THEIR site. :>
First of all, about the message above, "Spammers will be shot on sight" - alarming, but I can guess the problems you have.
I made it here from Sire's Wassup blog. This is a very good collection of articles. Will look around a bit.
It is amazing how, blog authors work hard on getting good, useful content and take such little notice on their comment pages. I have experiences like this myself. If there is a moderation process in place, it is mandatory to mention that in the comments section. Of equal importance is the message after one has commented. I am also wary of imposing too many rules on the commenters. It is a fine balance, to keep the scammers away and makint an easy time for the legitimate users !!
Hii App.. I left a reply to your comment on my blog! Do you know how to allow subscribing to comments on blogger ?
I am not sure exactly what you are asking, but I'll try to answer all possibilities I can think of and see if I hit something that you meant.
For the visitor:
Subscribing to comments RSS feed:
To subscribe to all comments on this blog, the feed would be
http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default
I didn't add a link to this on my blog, because I can't think of why anyone would want to subscribe to all comments on all posts and not just the ones on posts they want to follow. Subscribing to all comments could seem very nonsensical when taken out of context.
To subscribe to comments on a per post basis, the link is at the bottom of the post's page, after all the comments.
Subscribing to comments by email:
If the Blogger blog has a comment form on the same page as the post, rather than it being in a seperate page, then you can not subscribe by email on that blog.
If the blog uses classic comment form, such as this blog does, where the form is on a different page than the original post, the following information applies:
When you make a comment, there are options for signing your comment. If you use a method that allows it, there will be an option to subscribe to the comments and a box to enter your email address.
If you are using anonymous commenting or name/url, you will not have this option. Using a Google account will give you this option, but that will take away the backlink to your site on your name, and replace it with a link to your blogger profile, instead.
For the blog owner:
How to enable subscribing to full comment RSS on your blog:
Take the default feed URL for your blog and replace "posts" in the url with "comments" and make a link where you want it to be on your blog. This would be the original RSS link and not any third party link, such as FeedBurner.
Optionally, you could just add a widget for it. They have a newer one related to feeds that has it built in with feeds for both posts and comments.
How to enable subscribing to per post comments:
It should be in your blog's template, already. If the designer of your template forgot to add it, then hit the contact link at the top of this page and email me and I will reply. I can't paste the code you need in this comment box and the instructions could be complicated. I would prefer to work one-on-one with you to do it, that way you don't mess up your blog, or destroy any special customizations.
How to enable subscribing by email:
For the most part, you don't have much control over enabling this, except in the case of the comment form being on the post's page, which you can only get if you use Blogger in Draft. Since they didn't add email subscribing to that beta feature yet, the only way to allow your readers to subscribe to comments would be to stop using the beta feature and go back to the default comment form on blogger's seperate page.
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Now, if I haven't answered your question yet, please rephrase it to clarify what you meant, and try asking again.
And if all you wanted to know is if I, personally, know how to do it and I explained it above, then the obvious answer is... Yes, I do. :-P
lol.. Thanks for that App! I am new to blogger (and blogging itself) and wanted to know how I can allow this for my readers so they know when I reply them. So many people I know use other blogging platforms, its a pity blogger only allows this feature with google accounts.
And no, I didnt want to simply test your knowledge! Thanks for your reply..
I agree. That's why I make my comments short now.
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