I wish every blog had a user friendly commenting system. It wouldn’t kill comments by using captchas by forcing people to decipher gibberish and it would make it easy to know when someone responded to the comments you left.
That commenting system would probably have many of the features my friend Jens describes in How to turn Triberr into the best commenting system for WordPress because those help build community and generate a dialogue.
Community and Dialogue
Community and dialogue are a big part of what I look for in a blog as well as what I am trying to build here. I am interested because people power social media and because I love stories and I love to learn.
An active community with a solid commenting system is often where the magic happens but sometimes we make it harder on ourselves and others by not providing a commenting system that lends itself to that.
When I leave a comment on a blog I am interested in hearing back from the author and or community members. The thing is that we are all busy people and it is sometimes hard to keep track of where we have been online so if we don’t receive a notification about a response it is easy to miss.
Sometimes that means we miss out on what could have been a great conversation and sometimes it means hard feelings develop because when you don’t respond to comments it is similar to ignoring someone.
No one likes to be ignored and sometimes perception trumps reality.
What do you think?
Everybody hates the captcha. I just recently switched from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. Love the CommentLuv! 🙂 In regards to spam, Akismet was doing a great job on the free WordPress site, so, I went ahead and purchased it for the self-hosted one; less than $40.00 a year. Although I do belong to Triberr, I haven’t figured out how that site works yet and didn’t realize they had a commenting system. Must read that; thanks.
Hi Debbie,
I am a fan of Akismet, they do nice work. Same for CommentLuv.
I’m definitely in favor of the basic WP commenting system Josh and yes, with CommentLuv as well.
The reason I don’t like these other systems is because I refuse to sign up with them just to leave a comment and if you aren’t then you’ll never know what the blog owner said in response to your comment. I never go back and check it.
Now I recently had issues with my blog and my hosting service kept pushing down my throat a captcha plug-in because it’s the only surefire way to beat spam once and for all. I told them yeah, along with every legitimate commenter online today too! They are a royal pain in the ass because most of the time they don’t work even when you type in the write code.
We like simple people and if you can’t keep it simple for us then we’ll find someone who will.
Amen to this one Josh!
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
Captchas are awful and there are a ton of different options which is part of why I don’t understand why more bloggers don’t try them. Of course I am biased, but I don’t understand why more bloggers don’t work to make commenting easy.
We are definitely on the same page here.
I agree, Josh. The easier the better for comments. My favorite is basic WP commenting with CommentLuv. Disqus and Livefyre are difficult on the iPad. You know what’s more frustrating than typing a comment on an iPad keyboard? Doing that and then losing your comment because Disqus or Livefyre won’t load!
I would even prefer Captcha to Disqus or Livefyre. Now that’s saying something!
Hi Carolyn,
I don’t understand why the DISQUS and Livefyre teams haven’t worked the kinks out of commenting with an iPad. It seems like such an obvious place to focus their attention.
I totally agree! It is so frustrating trying to comment and then seeing your words disappear time and again as you have to log in YET AGAIN or decipher another indecipherable word or set of numbers. I often just give up.
Hi Beduwen,
Let’s join together and scream ARRGHHHH!! It is ridiculously frustrating to see those words simply disappear.
I used to refuse to give up but I have grown so tired of it that I have been known to lay down my pen and go elsewhere.
I like the idea of building a community through comments and I feel commenting should be the easiest thing there – even more than the obvious sharing buttons. The captcha is still such a common thing that I wonder how the moderators / blog authors don’t get how tough they are making it for the others.
Hi Hajra,
Some people feel like they are under siege from spam and believe captchas are protecting them. I wish they would use an alternate source of protection but…
Hi Josh
I definitely agree with you. Community is something I feel strongly about on my blog and I try and respond to all comments within a day or two.
I don’t really like the commenting systems you have to log on to comment and I’m not really a fan of Triberr either.
CommentLuv does it’s stuff for me but I agree some of the things Jens mentions would also be a nice thing to have.
Hi Tim,
My biggest challenge is trying to respond to the comments within a day or so. I am embarrassed when it doesn’t happen.
Sometimes I dream about becoming a serious programmer so that I could take our ideas and turn them into reality.
Josh, I totally subscribe to your viewpoint, we should give response to every possible comment minus the spam.
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Every now and then I have some trouble identifying spam. Sometimes comments come in that blur the line a bit.