Recently, I have noticed what seems to be a growing trend from sites and blogs that I consider to be legit, as well as, extremely valuable, promising money or fame for the quantity of comments left on their site.
What Do You Think?
I am curious what folks really think about this practice. To be honest, I am not sure what I think the about entire issue. I believe there are many ways and multiple sides to examine.
I think rewarding others by providing trackback links to those who write and comment about your site, or the products you are promoting, or your articles is a great way to say “thank you.†However, doing so based on models of quantity may ultimately backfire.
Human SPAM or Computer SPAM – It’s Still SPAM!
Most of the SPAM comments I have seen from my other blogs this year have been, “Right on! Keep up the good work!†or “Good Post†or “Great Articleâ€, quite frankly, I don’t care if that comment comes from a human being or an automated posting application – I do not see any value in these comments. I’m grown-up enough not to need my ego stroked for no apparent reason. Also, there are many services today which provide that level of feedback from readers, such as, “digg†or “BUMPzee!â€. I think comment value comes from well thought out reactions to our articles. It makes our articles better and the communities we are trying to build more valuable.
Moderating SPAM… really?
The sites that have started to promise these types of rewards affirm that they will not allow comments from folks who appear to be SPAMming, but, I have to wonder how many resources will be needed to really ensure that level of quality, and how long it will be before their comments are never read by those who frequent their site because they are full of “Good post†or “Wow, great article, couldn’t have said it better myself†or “Keep up the good work – Great Article.†All of which would take less than 10 seconds for a person to write.
An Alternative – How About Quality?
I really think it would be much better to re-consider the reward model being used and apply a “Post Quality†metric to reward your commentators that way. I doubt there would be a way to automate this, but for those of us who work hard to generate legitimate content – that is a manual process too. I do not believe it would be that much more of a time investment to read a few comments and make a subjective decision to reward the ones which we like and appreciate the most.
Your Turn – Let Us Know What You Think
{democracy:3}
Mark,
I personally believe that if some one comments on my blog, I should at least thank that person for taking time. One of the reat ways to thank your commenters is by “DoFollow” plugin. While comments contribute to the quality of your site they just do that, “contribute” it is up to you to provide quality content.
Thanks for opening up your comments!
Waste of time. It will alienate your real readers and just make you look bad.
General rule to follow, if it “feels” like the wrong thing to do, or you have to ask… it usually is.
Hey there Vlad -
Yeah, I see your point. Of course, I agree that it is the author’s responsibility to generate the original article content and I appreciate a response like yours – where it is more than “good job”
Also, thanx for the tip about opening the comments up to a wider audience.
Thanks for commenting Jim – Can you clarify? What is a waste of time – Setting up DoFollow or not linking to commentators sites?
I dofollow so everybody that comments get a link if they leave one.
rewards are cool, just for quality, not quantity.
I think Jim meant that buying comments is a waste of time, which I would tend to agree with. There are varying degrees of comment-begging. Some rub me the wrong way, others don’t.
What Scott said.
Thanx Jim – I appreciate your point of view.
Nice Site. I am new here but will be visiting more often as you have done a good job.
Thanks
I agree you should reward those who comment but not on all comments, only for those who post quality, thanking those who just say good post, good article is just a waste of time.
I fully agree with you, spam is really nuisance these days, and people come and drop out irrelevant comments, afterall quality also matters and when you write an article you expect appropriate and sincere feedbacks from people.
I think you took a good initiative by giving this reward.
I hate spam it makes enjoyment of the internet more difficult, because i am always thinking about what i am doing online. regarding SPAM. When you are looking for information spam always make your search slower, because you have to filter out the crap. thanks for the post
I hate spam it makes enjoyment of the internet more difficult, lol
Thanks!!! cool…
I really think that such arangements
Thanks a lot for the tips…………….!
i will keep visit your blog later again……..!
he arms race between spammers and bloggers continues and I often feel like I’m on the front lines. I’m so thankful for tools like Akismet that automatically prevent bots from spewing bullshit in blog comments.
Nobody loves spam, they are really trouble.
Spammers are really difficult to prevent. Thanks for your informative post.
I appreciate your point of view.
Very nice! You’re pretty smart, i’ll be keeping up with this blog in the future.
Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by working on Open Source projects? … So, I’ve been thinking, are we developers killing our profession by working for free? …. add comment. JavaScript is needed to access comments. …
Nice post! I really like your site design. Just thought I’d drop a line, take it easy!
Very nice blog. Keep it up, i’ll be following along. Drop me a line on my blog sometime, Online Movie Reviews. Later.
I agree that it is the author’s responsibility to generate the original article content and I appreciate a response like yours – where it is more than “good jobâ€
I totally agree with your third paragraph. And I think reward should be given for the contend of the site.
Buying comments? Geez, what’s next buying facebook fans…oh yeah, people do that too…LOL.