Should Your Blog Have a Commenting Policy?

by

For almost two years I never had a published commenting policy on DragonBlogger.com but the constant KeywordLuv and DoFollow abuse plus seeing one on other blogs finally convinced me to add my own to DragonBlogger.com.

Really I did this so that when I decided to spam comments and users emailed me asking why comments were deleted or won’t show up, I could refer them back to a clear commenting policy.  I think things should be spelled out and you should always have a disclosure or policy to point people to, so that you don’t make exceptions, excuses or create inconsistencies in what you do.

So I finally decided to create an official commenting policy which I implemented a few weeks ago officially so I can reference people to the policy.  I have also added it to my disclosure policy for my blog as well.

Here is my disclosure policy:

  • You MUST use your name or online name. Keywords only will get your comment delinked or marked as spam. Be warned.
  • Both Author URL and Commentluv URL will be dofollow only after 3 "solid" comments.
  • Restrict yourself to 3 Keywords Only. Anything more than 3 keywords and your comment risks getting deleted!
  • Links to incomplete sites, suspicious sites, blatant affiliate sales sites or Google unfriendly sites will be removed.
  • STUPID SPAMMY COMMENTS such "Bookmarked for future reading", "Great site. Good article" and the rest of them are not allowed. Don’t waste your precious time and mine. Also comment regurgitation is not allowed on my blog.
  • Comments not written in proper form/grammar or with mispelling may be deleted or edited for readability sake.
  • Finally for me to believe that your comment is not spam, you MUST make reference to something written within the post.

When creating a commenting policy make sure you cover your bases and have a catchall phrase.  I don’t generally reject many comments that aren’t auto filtered by Akismet and WP-SpamFree wordpress plugin, if your comment made it through the comment filters it 90% will be accepted and approved by me as long as you in some way relate to the post and not use only keywords for a name.

Some of the funniest comments I have received are ones like:

image

This was left on a poem, but I get hundreds like this per week.

Thank Thor for Akismet and WP-Spamfree or else we bloggers would all be wasting many hours of our time sifting through comments and be far less productive blogging.

-Dragon Blogger

Share Feedback We Want to Hear From You