Do You Turn Comments Off?
Posted by Mitch on Aug 8, 2009
Earlier today, I read a blog post that I felt was good enough for me to leave a comment on. The post had only 4 comments, so I figured it couldn’t hurt adding mine to the list. However, I didn’t have any way of getting into the post to leave a comment. Then I realized what had happened.
The blog owner must have her blog set to turn off the option to comment on a post after a predetermined amount of time. It’s an option all of us have that have WordPress blogs; I’m not sure if other blog types offer the same thing.
Why would someone do this? Well, there are a couple of reasons one might think about it.
One, lots of old blog posts are fodder for spam to get in. Some people don’t look at all their responses, and spammers know that, so they set their algorithms to look for older posts within a blog to leave their messages on. For their purposes, a link is a link, and because of age, that post might have gotten some page rank love, which might benefit them.
Two, some folks might get back to those who write them, but suddenly see a response that throws them off because they’re not sure what it’s in reference to. Now, WordPress tells you which post it’s on, and you can take the time to go and read that post before responding, but some people don’t want to go backwards.
In each of those instances, one might decide to turn off comments. However, I’m not one of those people. On my business blog, one of my most active posts is one I wrote more than 2 years ago, and the topic is still relevant to that particular industry. On this blog, one of my top posts was this one on indexing Google Desktop, which I wrote last November. People are still looking for that information, and when they find it, they like to say thanks.
I can’t see why I’d want to disallow anyone to leave a comment on my blog. Maybe it’s because I don’t have thousands of visitors a day, like this particular woman has. I’m not sure, but I know this much. I can’t see me ever turning off comments from anyone who wants to leave one. So please, leave comments as much as you wish to, unless you’re a spammer, and if you have an opinion on this topic, leave an opinion and let us all know what your thoughts are.
Blogs are for interacting with each other; so, let’s interact.
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy! ;)
Anyway, if you go to the Discussion Tab, and the Before Comment Appears subheading there is an option that says, “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”. You have to uncheck that to avoid every first comment from a person being held in queue for moderation. Mine is unchecked now -whew!
You know I’ve never heard of that option of disabling after a period of time. Was the post in an archiving folder?
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Mitch Reply:
August 8th, 2009 at 8:25 PM
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Mitch Reply:
August 8th, 2009 at 10:17 PM
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Since my readers are more or less regular, I have not received any complaints so far.
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Mitch Reply:
August 9th, 2009 at 1:06 PM
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I have never turned off comments before, but I think will for a post I have for tomorrow. It is a post where I need help with something for only 24 hours, and after that comments would not help… so I think I will close the post to comments the next day.
So I can see where turning off comments might come in handy.
P.S. Mitch… did you notice that you have 2 checkboxes below the CommentLuv box below that are exactly the same?
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Mitch Reply:
August 9th, 2009 at 2:22 PM
I know about the two checkboxes at the bottom. One of them doesn’t work, and I can’t figure out how to find it so I can get rid of it. The one that’s working I do know how to get to that one. But I’m still looking for it.
I hadn’t thought about turning off comments on posts that are only for a short period of time. You’re right, it’s probably useless if it’s timed, but hey, it’s hard for me to find the one thing right now, so I’m leaving the other alone. lol
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Mitch Reply:
August 10th, 2009 at 9:17 AM
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Normally, I leave comments on indefinitely, but lately I’ve been seeing a big increase in comment spam on older posts on a couple of my blogs. As a result, I’m experimenting with turning off comments on posts over 30 days old.
I don’t know for sure if I’ll keep doing it, however.
I like getting comments, but rarely get relevant comments on older posts.
Act on your dream!
JD
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Mitch Reply:
August 10th, 2009 at 5:35 PM
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John Dilbeck Reply:
August 12th, 2009 at 1:29 AM
After thinking about it since posting my last comment, this morning I went in and removed the time limitation on comments. In other words, I opened comments completely on my three major blogs.
We’ll see how it goes. Yes, Askimet does a great job of catching almost all the spam, but a few still sneak in occasionally.
I have one blog where comments aren’t appropriate and I’m leaving them turned off. It’s just for announcements of new special offers and discount coupons.
Act on your dream!
JD
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Mitch Reply:
August 12th, 2009 at 1:47 AM
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To answer your question, NO.
But I’ve seen this thing on a few blogs myself, and sometimes when I find a post via a search and want to ask a question and can’t, it bugs me. But then, it’s not my blog.
You are right I think that the only reason some bloggers do this is because of spammers, but those people that find their posts via the search engines at a later date are the ones that suffer. With Akismet and Bad Behavior, I don’t get many spam comments, and I have no problem deleting the ones I get. I wish these bloggers would just do the same thing, and not turn off comments. Oh well… steve, the trade show guru
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Mitch Reply:
August 10th, 2009 at 5:36 PM
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August 11th, 2009 at 4:07 PM
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Mitch Reply:
August 12th, 2009 at 3:15 AM
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