What makes a good comment?
05/18/2008
It’s easier to define a bad comment than a good one, but here are a few points.
- A good comment is well-written (proper grammar, spelling, punctuations, etc.)
- A good comment is funny or insightful (or better yet, both)
- A good comment is relevant or at least related to the topic of discussion
- Testimonials or feedback from your experience on our site is always good.
The best rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you would do it in real life. If you wouldn’t go into someone else’s business and start selling your own stuff there, don’t do it on someone else’s website. Be friendly and add something to the conversation and then if it’s appropriate you can mention politely something you have if it’s relevant. But you need to contribute something and not look like you’re there just to sell them something. See also our list of Things that make a Bad Comment too.
Why we remove No Follow comments x 2
Removing No Follow from every post which some websites do is OK if you want to make a statement against Google and No Follow, but it seemed too easy. Only rewarding the very highest commenters as Google does now seemed like the bar was too high for my little blog. Even Link Love plugin’s limit which was set to 10 by default seemed too high since nobody but me has ever made 10 comments on my site but me.
That certainly wasn’t going to motivate very many people to participate or do anything more. So we lowered the bar to two comments which seemed much more reasonable, requiring a little more effort, at least a couple minutes of work and thought, and at the same time it reduced the amount of spam or at least made it easier to recognize.
TollFreeNumbers.com is based on WordPress. WP’s a great blogging package but we’ve customized it quite a bit to make it feel more like a website than a blog. That’s good because it gives it a nice timeless look, but it also means that many people don’t realize that they can leave comments very easily just like a blog. So this helps to let them know that they can leave comments as well as encouraging our visitors to join in the conversation.
How to remove the No Follows after X comments.
If you use Wordpress, all you need to do is use Link Love plugin and then edit the variable $allpassion_comment_count = 2. I also like Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin except that it is only editable between 3 and 10 comments.
Next I have to go and put messages in posts telling visitors that we will give them a live link I they contribute just two comments. If you got a number from us, leave a testimonial or feedback right in the comments. That’ll be one. Now you just need to find one other thing to add. Ask a question, point something out that helped you, or made you think of something else. We’re all friends so speak up!
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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