Taking Your Camera on the Road

I want to seriously talk to you about the responsibilities of hosting comments on your website. It's fun and it's a great thrill to get a response to something you've written, but it also has responsibilities, both by you and the comment poster. We can't control the comment poster, but we can control our response to the comment. That is our responsibility as a website owner and/or administrator.

Dealing with comments means identifying and dealing with unwanted spam such as comment spam or inappropriate or off-topic comments. You may, or may not, have a responsibility to respond to comments, so it may add more to your site's workload. Then there is the debate of what comments should stay or be removed dependent upon your site's policies and standards. There are a lot of questions to be asked and answered, and with all things, it begins with a plan.

The Debate Over Deleting a Comment

In a moment we will cover the issues of comment spam, but let's look at the times when you are faced with an inner debate over allowing a comment to remain on your site or deleting it.

In order to support your debate before it starts, it helps to have a general policy on comments and privacy. By allowing comments on your site, visitors should know you will protect their privacy by not showing or using their email address, even though it may be required for commenting. You also need to set some ground rules and/or guidelines for what you will allow or not allow on your site.

We have a Legal Policies page that outlines all our legal issues and stands on our site. It includes our Privacy Policies and Comments Policies. You may use these as an example.

We are really open about a lot of our comments, but few of our topics attract controversy. Commentary, sure, but not great debates. If your site invites such debates, be clear about what you will tolerate. Name calling might, or might not, be encouraged. Only you can decide how far you will allow specific topics, language, accusations, negative talk, or arguments. Whatever your limits are, make sure they are in your Comments Policy.

Still, even with such policies in place, site administrators are often faced with the choice of "to delete or not delete". That's the hard part.

Here are some tips to help you write your Comments Policy and answer some of the inner debate issues over comments on your site.

Is it appropriate?

It's up to you, as the site administrator, to decide if the comment is appropriate. But what does "appropriate" mean? If the topic at hand is about travel photography and the comment is about how stupid the power company is, that would be an inappropriate comment for the topic at hand. Or appropriate might mean offensive language or accusations that are unnecessary and just "wrong" in the situation. It is up to you to decide what "appropriate" means, and you need to be clear about why.

Does it help?

Clearly a comment about the stupid power company on an article about photography doesn't help the subject. If the comment is on topic, encourages more discussion, teaches, or provides helpful information, it should stay. If it kills the discussion and doesn't provide any help to the topic, why bother? Delete it.

Offensive

"Offensive" is one of those nebulous words that means different things to different people. For some, offensive means profanity, while for others, it may mean any comment that goes against their personal beliefs or opinions or site content and purpose. It could also mean slander or derogatory intent. Again, you have to decide, but whatever you deem offensive, get rid of it.

Will it hurt someone?

This seems to be a simple criteria to evaluate. If a comment says something mean and nasty about someone, then it probably should be deleted. But if it says something mean and nasty about President Bush or a famous or public figure, then it might not directly hurt them. The good ole freedom of speech and rights to say anything you want against anyone in the public eye might entitle you to leave the comment, if your site caters to such discussions. But what about prejudice and racial slander? Jokes about ethnic or religious groups may hurt someone, too, even if not directed at a specific person. Your post or article might be about the Muslim dominance of terrorist groups and someone may make a comment about how horrible Muslims are. While that might apply to your topic, it is a sweeping judgement against all Muslims and you have to decide if it is appropriate, offensive, and acceptable or not.

Will it encourage offensive or off-topic discussions?

Many site administrators enjoy the repartee of the debate on their site, but if comments will foster negative and offensive discussions, inciting a riot on your site, you might not want that. Angry debates and accusations may lead to off-topic comments and a whole lot of trouble you might not want. Or you might want that. Only you can choose to delete the comments or close the discussion.

Freedom of Speech vs Censorship

Your Comment Policy may need to tackle this issue, but only if you need to justify your moderation, editing or deleting of comments, or absolute control over your site's content. The courts haven't gotten into violations of freedom of speech and censorship over comments on websites, but that is probably in our future. Right now, you, as the site owner, control the content on your site and only you can set up your standards, guidelines, and ground rules. If freedom of speech and censorship rights are important to you, then say so and set the rules for your site accordingly.

Time Waster Comments

While not as politically important as freedom of speech, offensive nature, or incitement to riot on your website, you still have to decide if a comment is a time waster for you and/or your readers. If the comment is helpful, fine, but if it is a waste of space on your site, adding only fill and no value, then it might not be worth leaving in place. Eliminating time wasting comments saves space in your database and on your site, and can speed up the access of web pages, though by small amounts. A lot of time wasting comments, though, can add up. Again, look at the intent, value, and contribution the comment makes to the topic at hand. If it is a time waster, consider getting rid of it.

Can you sleep at night?

Early on, I sometimes left comments on my site that then kept me awake at night. I debated and thrashed in my mind about the worthiness of the comment and the comment poster's intent. No more. I have to look at that comment on my site for a VERY long time and if it bothers me enough to interrupt my daily activities, including sleep, it's GONE. I trust myself to know what is best for me and there is no comment on my site worth agonizing over. It's my site and I have the power of the delete button under my control. So do you.

Do not make excuses, justifications or defend your removal of a comment. It only calls attention to it. Just do it. It is your site, your policy, and your peace of mind. You will have to look at the comment on your site for a very long time while the commentor may be off elsewhere having forgotten what they posted on your site. You control what appears on your website. Make it the BEST you have to offer and encourage everyone participating on your site to do the same.

Responding to Comments

Not every comment posted on your website requires a response, though at first, you may want to respond because it is SO exciting to get feedback. Monitoring and responding to comments, though, can become time consuming and obsessive.

First, determine when a response is necessary. A comment without a question needs no response, usually. A comment that makes a statement that is totally off-base may need a response to keep thing on track and topic. If you wish to encourage discussion, then your response will help direct the flow of the "conversation".

Second, determine WHY you are responding. Is it because there is a question, or because you want to correct their supposition? Or is it because they piss you off? Remember that comments are simply letters combined into words on your website. They have no emotions behind them unless you give them power. Words hurt, but they hurt with the power our assumptions, expectations, and imagination give them. If they really make you angry, delete them without a response. If you want dialog on your site, even if it makes you angry, then you need to understand and accept that, and compose your words wisely.

THINK before you respond. Consider your response carefully. Take time to evaluate the BEST response. Do not let your temper get control. Remember, this is your site and you have the power to control what appears on it. And that responsibility and power means controlling your comments as well as theirs.

Lastly, consider the value of responding. Just like with comments, does your response add to the conversation or information? Does it help? Is it appropriate or offensive? Will it hurt? You can post your response and then delete it later if you regret it, but think before you respond.

Before I make it sound like comments are hard work and horrible, let me add that comments are wonderful. They provide interaction and communication between you, the site owner, your work, and the audience. Not everyone will respond to everything you post, but when they do, it's a thrill.

Some sites specialize in generating content that encourages discussion and they have tons of fans who bombard their sites with commentary, compliments, and discussions. Others discuss their day-to-day activities and enjoy it when someone says, "Been there, done that" or "That helped, thanks!" Review sites are dependent upon them, seeking people's comments on the subject and helping others get a feel for the product, service, or subject before deciding for themselves.

Don't run from comments for fear of comment spam and the increase in workload. While our site doesn't demand commenting for our content to have value, many ideas for articles have come from people's comments on our site. Comments add color and flavor to a site. Comments are good things.

What is Comment Spam?

Comment spam is a fact of life for blogs and sites with an open door policy for comments and interaction. Comment spam arrives on your website in two main ways. Occasionally by hand posting of time-wasting idiots who post nonsense for fun or try to get links to their site by posting links to their site everywhere, but more often by robots, little Internet programs that crawl around looking for websites with comments and posting links to online gambling and medications for improving your sex life or extending your life.

Here are some examples.

Pitiful Time Wasters

The pitiful time wasters are the people, often kids, who have nothing better to do but search the Internet for random subjects and then post comments like "Your site sucks", "f**k you", "This is such a stupid waste of time", "Why don't you have pictures of naked women?", and my personal favorite, "You don't have what I'm looking for. I hate you." You cannot easily control these, but for the most part, WordPress and most blogging and CMS tools tend to spot these using sophisticated filtering and stop them or hold them for moderation, especially if it the comment spam includes swear words.

Link Needers

The web is built on links. Search engines increase page ranking dependent upon who you link to but mostly who links to you. People try all kinds of tricks to get their website to the top of the search engine rankings, and link needers are coming after you. By posting a link to their site on your site's comments, they have bypassed the traditional kind request for a link to their site and forced one upon you. Sometimes they are tricky and try to make the comment match the content, but you can usually tell the difference.

Comment Spam Robots

Comment spam robots are the worst of the comment spam criminals. These are software robots that crawl around the Internet looking for open comments. When they find them, they hook in and start leaving comments all over your site about whatever they are dishing out, usually drugs, medicines, male enhancements, vitamins, gambling, and porn. Their comment spam rarely arrives alone but hits multiple posts throughout your site with the same comment, or a slight variation on a theme. WordPress and other blogging and CMS developers work hard to fight comment spam robots off, protecting their users. It gets harder and harder as people keep designing smarter detection avoiding programs, but the developers usually keep a step ahead of these criminal time wasters.

Sneaky Comment Spammers

The sneaky comment spammers are the ones you really have to look for. They require more work to determine if they are legitimate. These are the nice comment spammers. They say things like "I really like your site, keep up the good work.", "This is a beautiful site.", "It looks like you worked hard to create this site. Good work.", "I like what you have to say. I'm going to tell my friends.", and "This is really good information. I'm going to mark it as a favorite." When these first started showing up, I preened. I even pointed them out to my husband with pride. Then I learned that these were NOT legitimate but creepy comment spam robots that were lying and creating links to their sites. Some investigation found that some of these links were indeed hooking up with pharmacy and gambling sites. DAMN! These are the sneaky comment spammers! More and more comment spam prevention tools help to eliminate these, but if you get a lot of "nice comments" within a day or two across many posts - you've been hit by a sneaky comment spammer.

A Day in the Life of a Paranoid Website Administrator

Let me introduce you to a typical day in a paranoid website administrator. In WordPress v1.2, after several months of spam free use, the comment spammers slammed my site. I tried all kinds of spam catching tools that worked, but my paranoia grew. Like most site administrators, I hated those time wasting monsters.

With WordPress 1.5, without any plugins, comment spam dropped almost to nil. There were maybe 5 comment spams a week. Remember, these include the occasional idiot time waster trying to link my site to theirs or just posting stupid stuff, comment spam that can easily get through most spam catching software. I have a top page ranking site with over 700 articles. That kind of popularity and visibility attracts a lot of freaks, whackos, and time wasters. Now, almost nothing. Comment spam, for the most part, is controlled and controllable.

With no comment spam coming in, I started to get worried. What if the new process was cutting out GOOD comments? I installed Paged Comment Editing Plugin from ColdForged which allows me to SEE what WordPress is catching. I was stunned at how little was actually coming through. Using the plugin, click on include spam to see what is being caught highlighted in a pink background. I can easily delete these, removing them from my database and saving some space. Nice.

Then one day I got hit by about 25 viagra/casino spams. While these were caught by WordPress comment spam filters, they showed up in pink using ColdForged's Paged Comment Editing Plugin. The monsters were in my spam catching database, eating up valuable space on my server. Well, not really but I was angry anyway. Remember, I'm paranoid about comment spam. After several months with only the occasional irritant, I was pissed, so I added the Bad Behavior Comment Spam Plugin.

Again, things trickled down to a nothing and I got paranoid again. Comments were being bounced by Bad Behavior before they even got in the door. It was "too quiet". I was paranoid. So I added Bad Behavior Stats so I could keep track of what it was doing. Bad Behavior was catching a LOT. On average, it nails 500 known comment spam spiders, robots, etc., every week.

But you see what happened? WordPress stopped the majority of the comment spam out of the package. I got paranoid so I added plugins to help me deal with MY paranoia not the comment spam!

Three Step Solution to Stopping Comment Spam

Luckily for WordPress users, and other blogging or CMS software, most of the filtering out of comment spam is done by the program or comment spam plugins. WordPress does an amazing job catching comment spam without any add-ons, but spammers work overtime to get in the door so you might consider adding some reinforcement.

Many people choose to stop comment spam by using an authorizing image tool or plugin. Near the comment form, a box with letters and/or numbers will be visible and they require the user to type what they see in the box in order to "authorize" their comment. For the most part, these work, but they don't always work and they put a burden on the user to "see" the characters and type them in correctly. This can be frustrating.

Other comment spam tools allow you to set certain words, called Spam Words, to filter out comments with those words in them. This works for a time, but the comment spammers are smart. For example, you may have the word "viagra" set as a spam word. While you are seeing the word "viagra" in those quotes, this is how I am really spelling it:

viagra

Or they will use a word like "fiôricët" and hide the "o" and "e" from filters because those are replaced with character codes for the foreign letters of "o" with circumflex and "e" with diaeresis symbols. See the little characters above the letters? Comment spammers are wickedly cunning and it's up to you, the site administrator, to be a little smarter by using smarter tools to prevent comment spam.

With WordPress, I personally use a three-fold approach to dealing with comment spam.

Stop Them at the Door with Bad Behavior

The Bad Behavior comment spam plugin for WordPress literally gives the finger to comment spammers when they come knocking. It stops the robot spammers before they get in. The program works so effectively, you might think it isn't working, so there is the Bad Behavior Stats WordPress Plugin that can be posted on your site or on your WordPress Administration Panels to let you know how many access attempts have been made over the past seven days.

Nail Them with Spam Karma 2

The WordPress comment spam catcher Spam Karma 2 is better than ever at filtering any comment spam that gets through, adding the bad robots to the blacklist, and giving you powerful control over your comment spam filters. It's overwhelming and intimidating. For the most part, I leave it set to it's defaults and it does the job. You can read through the documentation if you want to understand how it works - or just let it work. And work it does!

Watch the Comment Spam Filters and Plugins Work

Okay, so maybe I'm a bit of a control freak, but I want to know what spam is being caught and I'm worried about good comments getting grabbed by the spam catchers. ColdForged's Paged Comment Editing Plugin for WordPress allows me to click a link to see the caught spam in my database. I can then look through and decide what is really spam and what needs to be moved back into the good spam category and release it onto the site.

With a good Comment Policy and a clear plan in your head about what kinds of comments are worth keeping or deleting, you can rest a little easier. It also means you have less work to do because the work has been done. Now you can concentrate on providing great content that will attract good comments and leave the rest of the work to the comment spam filters and your comment policy guidelines - and your clear conscience.

Authors, photographers, teachers, and public speakers, Lorelle and Brent VanFossen, travel extensively with their camera and pen in hand to bring you a variety of articles on nature and travel photography including basic nature photography and the photography business, writing, travel, recreational vehicles, web page design, and life on the road. All images, design, and content are copyrighted and protected by law.

You can find related articles to this topic in our Web Pages and WordPress and Website Development and Photographycategories. The previous post is Nikkor 35mm SLR Lens History, Terminology and Technology and the next post is Weblog Ethics Survey Results. Comments About Comments, Issue Number 747, by Lorelle VanFossen, was updated August 7th, 2005.

You can follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed and you can find more feeds on our Feeds List. Your comment is welcome, as are trackbacks from your site.

Related Articles

• Separating Comments and Trackbacks and Pingbacks in Wordpress - The Answer
• Comment Spammers Saying Thank You and We Like You
• List of CSS Found Within Which WordPress Files
• WordPress Blog: Fighting Spammers
• Feeds
• Bad Behavior Stats in the WordPress Admin Dashboard
• Counting Up the Cost of Moving, Part 1
• Weblog Studies and Woes

Submit Article: BlinkList | Blogmarks | Digg | Del.icio.us | Ekstreme Socializer | Feedmarker | Furl | Google Bookmarks | ma.gnolia | Netvouz | RawSugar | Reddit | Scuttle | Shadows | Simpy | Spurl | Technorati | Unalog | Wink | Yahoo MyWeb2