I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to a fairly recent philosophical issue that the Blogosphere has yet to adequately address. Namely, what is the root purpose of allowing author links from commenters – especially given the rising tide of Comment Spam?
In this post I will attempt to enumerate the reasons, causality and consequences to justify the argument that the Blogging community needs to unite under a common philosophy regarding the use of links and author names in comments. I will also suggest an introductory framework to deal with the issue, most notably the institution of Terms of Use for all Blogs.
I believe it is important to focus on this problem quickly since the unethical, and possibly illegal, acts of sites like BuyBlogComments.com loom on the horizon.
Justification for Author Links
Every major Blogging system includes the ability for commenters to assign a URL to their comment which is almost universally used to turn their name into a hypertext link. I would argue that there are two primary reasons for Blogs to include an author’s URL:
- To encourage commenting. This reason is fair and valid because everyone wins. The Web site gains a little more content, the Blogger gets to engage in a stimulating conversation, and the Visitor receives some traffic back to their site so people can “research” them.
- To get to know the commenter. A community can develop around personal interactions in the form of comments. As people are able to get to know one another the experience becomes more personal and “humanized”. Mutual respect and even friendships can develop from this type of interaction.
Commenter Reasons For Providing Links
The philosophical problem comes into play when we consider that a Blogger’s reasons differ from the primary reasons that people want their URLs to be included in comments, which I would argue are:
- To get referral traffic.
- To lend credibility via their online persona / reputation.
The Disconnect
Since the Blogger’s and Commenter’s reasons don’t match, there is bound to be a disconnect. And we therefore see issues arising:
- Commenters frequently use URLs for sites they would like to publicize, as opposed to sites that tell who they are.
- Bloggers often mark comments from legitimate visitors as Spam in social spam fighting services such as Askimet when non-personal URLs are used. This can have the effect of blacklisting legitimate users.
- Markets are springing up to take advantage of this gap with Commenters being paid to falsely list author URLs for clients in blog comments.
- Blog posts, especially popular ones, are filling with empty comments that add no value.
The Solution
The solution to this problem involves bringing together three key parts:
- Implement a “Terms of Use” page to clearly outline expectations. I’m not aware of a single blog that has one, though it is irrational to expect any particular behavior without communicating expectations. Users need to be educated about where the lines are drawn so they can be held accountable. I’ve instituted one here as a sample.
- Consistent enforcement of standardized rules across top blogs. In the same way that most discussion forums share core rules, it’s important that the top bloggers send out a consistent message. Other blogs will follow the lead.
- Develop better user management and enforcement tools for blogging software. WordPress and other blogging packages should install a default “Terms of Use” page, and banning and other enforcement tools should be added to the core.
Rationale for Enforcement
I believe it’s important to explain to people why they are being asked to do something rather than just telling them to do it, so here are just a few reasons that serve to justify adherance to the policies outlined in any Terms of Use documentation.
For Commenters
- You are investing in yourself when you use a link that really describes who you are. All of these links build up over time and strengthen your online persona.
- Because of collaborative SPAM filtering, such as Akismet, commercial URLs will likely end up killing your ability to post comments on blogs all across the Web. If just a few people mark your comments as spam you will end up in a global blacklist.
- People wanting to learn more about you will actually spend time reading your site if they go there for that purpose, so you can link to and promote your other projects and they may actually get some quality traffic.
- If people follow a link to learn more about you and arrive at a commercial site they will be immediately turned off and leave, meaning the traffic served no purpose.
- If you use and link to your real persona bloggers will consider you equal in terms of valuing the opinion of another real person. If you fail to reveal your true identity then you do not deserve, nor will you receive equal treatment because you have no skin in the game.
For Bloggers:
- Allowing commercial links from commenters gives your site the appearance of a Spam farm. This will ultimately impact the perception of your site and damage your popularity.
- Comments are NOT necessary for a site to be popular! They are a luxury simply for you to receive feedback. Fewer, but high quality comments will be far more personally rewarding than tons of spammy one liners.
- Commercial links in your comments can, in some cases, damage your sites ranking in the search engines. You can develop a bad link neighborhood and lose valuable search engine traffic.
- Real, personal URLs of visitors are very valuable for getting to know the people your blog is attracting. You can make friends, do favors for one another, and really connect on a personal level.
Final Thoughts
For all of the aforementioned reasons (and more) I would encourage everyone – Bloggers and Commenters – to adhere to the following Rules:
For Commenters:
- Read and follow Lorelle’s rules for commenting.
- Ask yourself, “does my comment add value to this article or give the author constructive feedback?”
- Ask yourself, “would I post this comment if I wasn’t getting a link back?” If the answer is no, then don’t do it.
- If at all possible, advance the conversation. Take the time to explain how or why the article impacted you, or give a counter-argument.
- Providing links to additional authoritative or relevant resources is always appreciated, but do so in the text not in the URL field.
For Bloggers
- Communicate your Author Link policy to your visitors via a “Terms of Use” page. Let them understand your expectations and help educate them on the etiquette of being a good commenter. Feel free to link to this post rather than reinventing the wheel if it helps.
- Maintain a Zero-tolerance policy on commercial links from commenters. Delete the comments or at least edit and remove commercial URLs from every comment on your site. You’ve already communicated your policy now enforce it with conviction.
Very interesting most you have here John. I’d say some of the rationale you bring attention “For Bloggers” doesn’t necessarily apply, like “bad link neighborhood”. That shouldn’t really matter. Blogs are built on “client retention”, not so much on search engine traffic. You get looky-lou’s with search engine traffic. There are others, but i’m a little tired right now. :)
The thing I like about this post if you have completely analyzed everything, from both the perspective of the commenter and the blogger. I agree with a lot of the points made, especially that WordPress should enforce a Terms of Service by default.
One thing I must add though, is the point regarding links only to personal webpages. Arguably it’s hard to justify what exactly is a personal homepage. Obviously, it would be easy enough to clear out pages full of referall links or landing pages for affiliate products. But what you said about providing a link that shows who you are, I believe it doesn’t just have to be a webpage about your life. It shouldn’t necassarily be a blog where you post things about your everyday life regularly. I own several blogs, and they are who I am. They may be related to small niches, but they are still who I am. It is my mind, and my knowledge that I am sharing. I write because it’s what I love, especially the things I write about – not to hide a bunch of ads and affiliate links in.
Good views from both ends, blogger and reader. Keep up the good work
Okay, well I think you have an interesting idea. Could you please clarify, when you say “personal url’s” do you mean… for example only linking to the about page of the blog, or is it okay to link to the blog itself?
A few other thoughts:
1) I would argue that there is insufficient cognative disatance for theory to become practice. A simple example here is the idea of recycling. Say I get 5 cents to return a bottle. Five cents isn’t really enough $ to justify (feel good about) the value in recycling, so I must find within myself another “good reason” to return my recylables (ie: I’m helping the environment and that makes me feel good). This is not the case with blogs, if submitting a link gets traffic back to my site that is plenty of reason to justify my comment and thus the practice actually encourages spam.
2) I agree with TOS, they are important documents, and so are about pages. However, you must ask yourself are people really reading them? My experiance is that SPAMMERS wil SPAM regardless of what is in a TOS. They’ll hit 100 sites and if 25 don’t reject them..then it’s a good day. People who take the high road and don’t spam, will continue good practices regardless of TOS. Good commentors will apply their own philsophy to everything they do regardless of a particular sites TOS.
3) People are greedy. It’s unavoidable. You have a high PR site, and lots of traffic. People want a share of that traffic. I personaly found your site because it has a high PR. Your blog has some great comments, but I suspect even the best of your commentors have to admit to some traffic sharing motivation. Even if it’s only 1% of the motiviation it will still exist to some extent.
4) Right or Wrong, in a wierd way, I think SPAM is an indicatator to your blog popularity. The more SPAM your getting the more your site is known, and the more desirable it is to spammers.
..Anyway that’s my 2 cents for what its worth. I wonder will using the word SPAM so much cause this comment to be removed?
Luke,
Perhaps I need to clarify more, but when I use the the term “personal URL” I don’t mean that the link needs to go to a biographical page about you. Just that it needs to go to a site that lets me know what your interest are and somewhere has information about you on it.
In your case, I understand that you are a huge fan of Tupac. I’ve got no problem with that. But why in the world don’t you have an “about me” page on the site where you introduce yourself? You should be saying on that page, “Hi, I’m Luke. I’m Tupac’s #1 fan! I live in Kalamazoo, MI, I’m a student at XYZ University, and I also run these other Web sites – X, Y, Z…”
I mean, what if Tupac was himself surfing and came across your site and wanted to contact you to tell you he appreciates the site? He would have no idea who was behind it and would keep moving on.
One question I have for you. And be honest… have you read my “about” page? If so, how did it affect the way you view this site?
John
Well, you are 50% correct. Blogs do indeed (hopefully) grow a loyal base of readership – I know I truly appreciate mine. But at the same time blogs are fundamentally just Web sites that happen to be a little more interactive.
This blog receives at least one new visitor from Google every minute of every day of the week. Yes, at least a couple of thousand new visitors per day. While it’s true that search traffic is often fickle, it’s also true that some percentage of readers will like what they see and bookmark it, link to it, or subscribe. For this reason it is very important not to develop the bad link neighborhood effect.
Now, most blogs use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on outbound links in comments which in theory should help protect you. But some blogs do not. Additionally, there have been some studies done that show that it is actually possible that Google is still assigning some value to links with Nofollow. So it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
John
BradDet,
Thanks for the insightful commentary. I just answered your question regarding personal URLs in the previous comment so I’ll let you take a look at that. Now, on to your other comments:
So, the moral to the story here is that we are talking about both a carat (URL embedding) and a stick (threat of comment deletion). So for this reason it is important to outline the TOS so that people understand why you hit them when they cross the line.
John
PS – The word SPAM didn’t do it, but I think the link to Wikipedia is what put your comment into moderation. Never fear though, I approved it as soon as I saw it! :-)
John P. I had asked you in the post about the top ten comments hack. You seen the link to my personal blog http://www.sheley.org
is it okay if I link to my site journal http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/blogs/brandons-blog/ ?
If not, I’ll change it back to sheley.org.
The site journal talked about my life and I post on it more often then the sheley.org site, so it’s updated more and will give you good insight about my life :)
Thank-you for your thanks ;-)
LOL – I love the golden girls reference !
So if we think of spam as a “crime”, and “tos” as the law, and removing a post as the “punishment”, are you in fact implying that if there weren’t laws and punishment there would be more crime? I often wonder about this myself. How many people don’t do things simply because they are illegal? I tend to do only those things that allow me to still look at myself in the mirror, and would probably continue to do so regardless of what the laws are…but I admit I have to think more about that point. I agree that communicating expectations is very important but I’m not sure it applies to moral truths.
Furthermore, lets consider the Google Adsense program. They have a listed TOS, and I know for a fact that they work hard to enforce it, I have heard horror stories of people being banned without warnings and without any explanation (which is google’s right)..but even at that level, click fraud abounds…perhaps that’s slightly off topic though.
For what it’s worth that’s why I like your top commentors plugin (which doesn’t have no-follow. So people who post regular postings can have a no-follow, but people who are serious about it get rewarded.
..And speaking of dangling a carrot, your comment “Greed is good”. I don’t think I could disagree more. Sure greed is a part of life, everyone is greedy, it might even be “human nature”, but I don’t see anything good about it at all. In fact, I suspect it will lead to our ultimate distruction some day….Ubuntu…that’s the way to live life (the philosophy not the O/S..which is cool too)
I’m not sure the analogy is a perfect fit in this case, but if I were to run with it I’d say that generally in the Blogosphere we are currently living in a lawless, punishment free state because most blogs will allow just about any comment to stand. I am advocating the instatement of law in the form of TOS + Post Deletion.
First, that was actually a tongue-in-cheek quote from the movie Wall Street. But more importantly it was a reference to Adam Smith’s theory of Capitalism that states that it works precisely because everyone is pursuing their own self interest. I equate self-interest with greed.
Now speaking of self interest, and seeing as to how we are commenting in the thread about links in comments, I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit…
Since I just practically wrote a book on the topic here, with the main point being that commenters should use a personal URL when commenting, how did you arrive at the decision to use BWebCentral.com as your link (I removed the link from your name for now)?
I can’t find anything on that URL that even remotely lets me know who you are. And in today’s Web that could very well mean that you are a comment spammer in disguise, posting for pay, or simply trying to promote a commercial site. I mean really, why would anyone be tempted to lend credibility to any argument you make when they have no idea who you are, what you stand for, or if you are just some sneaky SPAMmer’s made up persona?
I’m not trying to be harsh, but I am trying to illustrate a point. Because this is what is in the back of people’s minds when they encounter a user posting under a pseudonym (like “BradDet”) and using an anonymous URL like BWebCentral.
John