Buying Comments – Are We Shooting Ourselves In The Foot?
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 Article”, 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!”. 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
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Post Info
This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 and is filed under Blog Mechanics.Tagged with: .You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed. You can Leave A Comment, or A Trackback.
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February 26th, 2007 08:39
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!
February 26th, 2007 12:24
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.
February 26th, 2007 12:25
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.
February 26th, 2007 13:21
Thanks for commenting Jim - Can you clarify? What is a waste of time - Setting up DoFollow or not linking to commentators sites?
February 26th, 2007 13:46
I dofollow so everybody that comments get a link if they leave one.
rewards are cool, just for quality, not quantity.
February 26th, 2007 18:15
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.
February 26th, 2007 22:33
What Scott said.
February 27th, 2007 00:35
Thanx Jim - I appreciate your point of view.
August 16th, 2008 16:20
Nice Site. I am new here but will be visiting more often as you have done a good job.
Thanks
October 10th, 2008 01:06
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.
November 17th, 2008 13:11
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.
December 18th, 2008 21:30
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
January 15th, 2009 13:11
I hate spam it makes enjoyment of the internet more difficult, lol
February 6th, 2009 08:22
Thanks!!! cool…
I really think that such arangements
February 6th, 2009 08:55
Thanks a lot for the tips…………….!
i will keep visit your blog later again……..!
February 8th, 2009 23:49
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.
February 12th, 2009 01:42
Nobody loves spam, they are really trouble.
February 12th, 2009 01:44
Spammers are really difficult to prevent. Thanks for your informative post.
February 19th, 2009 09:40
I appreciate your point of view.
February 26th, 2009 17:20
Very nice! You’re pretty smart, i’ll be keeping up with this blog in the future.
March 1st, 2009 11:52
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. …
March 1st, 2009 16:00
Nice post! I really like your site design. Just thought I’d drop a line, take it easy!
March 3rd, 2009 22:51
Very nice blog. Keep it up, i’ll be following along. Drop me a line on my blog sometime, Online Movie Reviews. Later.
March 10th, 2009 02:34
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”
March 25th, 2009 16:24
I totally agree with your third paragraph. And I think reward should be given for the contend of the site.