Why it is important to moderate comments on blogs

This is a guest post from Rubab Saleem of Pakistan Times. Hopefully I can get her to add a bio shortly. My apologies if the lack of author attribution when this post went live caused any confusion.

WordPress accesses are set up incorrectly.  Using contributor status is like blogging in a black hole because you can’t edit or see what you have written once you submit it. Because of that I provide author access but that allowed this post to be published before I had seen it or I would have asked Rubab to add an author bio. If you have a good solution  to allowing Authors to see all their posts but the blog owner to manage when guest posts are published please do share it with me.

Why Bloggers Should Moderate Comments on Blogs

Bloggers target at genuine and organic traffic for their blogs. Traffic comes either by search engines or by creating fronts and paths to reach back to a blog. Search Engines bring traffic to websites with several subtleties including quality and unique content, reliable information, being first on giving certain information, URL structures, back links etc. However from personal end comments are the most important mean to drag attention of the visitors. For “follow links” people sometimes drop uncalled for and unreasonable comments.

People come and drop a sentence in comment section saying “aaaahhhh!!!! loved this post will return ” or “excellent post will revisit” with an unfamiliar URL in website section, clicking on those URLs takes sometimes nowhere. I always wondered if such comments are spam or do they have worth for website either mines or the one who comments. Another type of generalized comment i recently started receiving that i would want to share:

Hi there, I found your website via Search engines while searching for a related topic for my study. Finally i found site talking this specific topic, It’s truly a wonderful and useful piece of information. I am pleased that you really provided this helpful info with all of us. Be sure to keep us informed like this. Appreciate your sharing.

This was posted on one of my post Islamic Banking in Pakistan: A consumer perspective. For past several months this comment stays in comment bank but i am reluctant to approve it because of the URL it has. WordPress is installed on my website; i have all the options to edit or remove the URL but i didn’t. Because i thought it might not have been a spam, and its generalized nature forced me to moderate it as there is nothing irrelevant though.

See another example on an article Kashmiri leaders demand probe into ‘rape’ of minor girl by troops ”

Exactly how did you figure all this out about this topic? I enjoyed reading this, I’ll have to visit other pages on your site straight away.”

Now here is a cultural and human rights issue confronts me with confusion while i think of approving particular comment on particular post. And no one can enjoy a post about rape of minor girl hence it irrelevancy is authenticated. And even if I approve this comment to show how largely my site is visited, other visitors will certain dislike the idea of enjoyment in this comment.

Check this comment on a post titled Clinton says administration to work with Congress on Pakistan aid conditions:

Your article is pretty uesful to me and aid me solve a large difficulty. I appreciate you very much. But i have some issue of comprehend the last paragraph. Can you say some details for me?

URL given with this comment on a political issue; takes me to the Office products on cheap rates. AAAhhhh thanks to my vigilance, i didn’t even think of approving it.

It is called common sense, imagine in this comment on a blog titled “NA refers KSE scandal, wheat scams to finance committee”
the keyword scam was picked. And i am sure scams have nothing to do with an environment blog. Here is comment

i hate scams wheter it is offline scam or online scams, there are lots of it these days ‘*~

One more reason for which i would always want to moderate comments is abusive language used by the visitors. Besides respecting the opinion of readers and visitors, it is also important to ensure cleanliness that conforms My Website’s policy.

It is hard to recognize spam whether in URL or in IP. Comment spam has not only evolved from random words support each other but with a link with the “proper” anchor text to something that seems to be written by a human. Even if i know they are written by human i would be reluctant in approving those.

Thus i would take time out from my schedule to moderate every single comment rather than letting these go unchecked. For me it is equally important to produce a quality content.

Tagged as: blog spam, blogs, comment spam