Comments are for Conversation

Comments are one of the most important pieces of a blog. Comments show you that people are really reading and responding to your posts. You can use them to get to know your readers, engage those who disagree with you and really get a feel for your blog’s place on the blogosphere.

The problem is, comments are also the most abused part of a blog. We are lucky enough to have tools like Akismet to help us catch crap comments before they go live. However, it is impossible to catch all of the junk. Sometimes people post a comment in such a way that it even appears to be a legitimate addition to the conversation.

Today I received an email from Martin at Zyon Hosting letting me know that someone had posted a comment slighting Zyon on my blog. An identical comment had been posted on at least two other blogs. I checked it out because I do have articles that would warrant comments about other hosting companies. In this case, it was clear that Martin was correct and this tool was just using my blog as a way to publicize his personal beef. Lame.

I’m going to tell you what I told Martin. This blog is about helping people and I won’t allow anyone to use it to get to my readers for their own personal agendas. It’s just not going to happen. I deleted the comment and I don’t plan on referring to anything about who did it because that would just bring more attention to it. I feel sorry for people who have to resort to this sort of comment spam. All that it means is that their blog doesn’t reach enough people for their flames to matter. So they have to exploit other blog’s reader’s to get their message out. That must really suck.

Sure, we all use comments at one time or another to get ourselves noticed. The point is that we ought to do it in a positive way. If I post an article-related, intelligent comment on a popular blog, you might come to my blog to see what else I have to say. That’s great. But using comments to bash is not cool. I will be more vigilant in the near future about catching these before they get much web time.

I’m sorry that companies like Zyon have to worry about that kind of crap when all they are trying to do is provide a quality service to people like me and you. I checked out Zyon’s website. I’m not in the market for a new host right now, but if I was I would certainly check them out. It’s just $5.99 for anything and everything a blogger could need hosting-wise. You ought to take a trip over to Zyon Hosting.

I can’t stop spammy comments from ever showing up on this blog, but I can at least try to repair any damage they might have done.