If you are a regular visitor or commenter of this site, you wouldn’t have to worry about this post at all. I hope it didn’t have to come to this, but alas the day has come to post the all-mighty comment policy.
OMNINOGGIN is a do-follow comment blog. That being said, the do-follow is meant to reward only those people who contribute to the conversation. As this blog grows I’ve been getting a lot more comments that do not contribute to the conversation. Here are some examples of do-follow abuses I’ve seen on this blog:
- I’ve seen comments from are people that go around to every WordPress plugin author’s page and comments something along the lines of:
hi. great idea. Thank you for plugin, perfect…
The person does not use these plugins and does not even know what they do. Other times, I get these comments on posts I’ve written as a review for a plugin that I did not develop myself.
- I’ve also received a lot of comments with do-follow search engines / community referrals praising my post. Not that I don’t like to be praised, but “good job on this post” is not enough to make a new visitor’s comment stick. It seems like the comment is left just for the link value. I only honor these short praises from regular readers and commenters because I know they really mean it.
- I’ve seen praises on my WordPress plugin, but the backlink brings me to a non-WordPress blog or no blog at all.
Andy Beard (the do-follow crusader) wrote a great post about why we should Do-Follow our blog comments. He also wrote a good comment moderation guideline that visitors need to know. I am not as harsh of a moderator as Andy, but from now on I will start looking at these things on all comments being left on this blog. That being said, please do not be discouraged from commenting and please do not take it personally if I delete your comment if it’s short or off topic. I hope you will understand and will be back to contributing in no time.
What do you guys think about the policy? Do any of you run a Do-Follow blog and have this same problem? How do you deal with it? Please share in comments!