I think more blog inches have been expended discussing commenting than any other aspect of blogging - and perhaps rightly so. Commenting was, when it first started, revolutionary: it turned the internet from a broadcast medium into something so much richer. I don't think it's overstating the case to say that existence of the Web 2.0, post-Cluetrain internet-as-conversation many of us take for granted now, can be laid at the door of blog commenting (unless we blame Pierre Omidyar and eBay feedback for it instead).

And with success, comes trouble. In the case of blogs, that's comment spam. I recently went back to a blog which I'd left for a year to find more than 50,000 spam comments awaiting my approval, advertising everything from - well, there was nothing I really wanted to buy Dealing with blog comments is a battle - between blogger and spammer, and between spammer (who needs to be inconvenienced) and legitimate commenter, who doesn't. And it's managing that second battle that can cause many difficult decisions for bloggers on the best way to set up their blog.

Let's look first at what you can do, and then we'll consider why you might want to do it.

Comments settings are accessible from the WordPress dashboard under Settings > Discussion.

• The first two options relate to pingbacks.
• Allow people to post comments on the article is the master switch: if this is not checked, then by default, commenting will be switched off for all posts on your blog. You could, however, choose to switch it on again for individual posts under "Discussion" on the Add New Post page.
• Comment author must fill out name and e-mail only relates to filling out the form, not to verification of the information: there is no checking that the email address is a valid one.
• Users must be registered and logged in to comment will force users to register before they can comment. If you don't have "anyone can register" set in Users settings, then this will effectively stop commenting for anyone but the blog author(s). (This is a pretty common cause of "lots of traffic but no comments" syndrome!)
• Automatically close comments on articles older than xx days: most spam is on older posts, so closing comments after real discussion is finished is a good way to knock out lots of spam. Change the default "14" days if discussions on your own blog go on longer than this: most don't.
• Enable threaded (nested) comments lets commenters reply to previous commenters, rather than just to the bottom of a long comment thread.
• Break comments into pages... can speed up page loading on posts with hundreds of comments (it's not worth worrying about if you get fewer than hundreds).
• Comments should be displayed with the older/newer comments at the top of each page: the convention is to show oldest comments at the top; you should stick with that unless you have a very good reason not to.
• Email me whenever...: you might not want an email every time anyone posts a comment, but you should get one each time a comment is held for moderation, i.e. a blog admin needs to manually approve its publication. It's only polite to moderate comments reasonably promptly.

Moderation section

• Checking An administrator must always approve the comment means that you will manually have to approve every comment that appears on your blog.
• Checking Comment author must have a previously approved comment means that you'll need to approve each commenter's first comment, but after that, they'll be published automatically. The check is done against emails, so if you have commenters who use a range of different email addresses, approval would need to be done for each of them.
• Hold a comment in the queue if it contains xx or more links. Spammers commonly post a list of dozens of links.
• Comment moderation and comment blacklist lists allow you to set your own lists of words that will throw comments into moderation or be marked as spam. Useful to filter out your own least-favourite profanities or pharmaceuticals.
• We'll come to avatars in another post, but this is where you set up the options for "little pictures in comments".

So given all these options, which do you set? Two general principles about blog comments:

1. Let plugins do the donkey work for getting rid of spam. It should be the odd spam comment that slips through to your comment settings to deal with.
2. It's your blog; do what works for your content and your readers, do what makes you happy. You can always change settings if you change your mind.

photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar

You'll get the comments your blog invites

The thought of letting people write what they like on your website can be a daunting one, but in practice, once you've shut the spammers out, you'll mostly get the comments your blog invites. If you write snarky, ascerbic posts about religion or politics, you'll get snarky, ascerbic commenters - some of whom will agree with you, and some of whom won't. If you post pictures of kittens, you'll probably get less snark, tho ur komentz miyt reed liyk dis. If you have a business blog, you might be worried that disgruntled customers will take out their frustrations in your blog comments; if this is the case, you should probably revise your customer service processes. And most people, basically, are good: instances of real nastiness in blog comments are thankfully rare.

If you want comments, make commenting easy

If you don't want comments, then turn them off. It's your blog. But you'll have a better time blogging if you do allow comments: conversation, feedback, discussion, argument and even the odd insult make blogging more interesting for you, and reading your blog more interesting for your readers. If you're only posting, you're preaching to the wind: is anyone listening? does anyone agree, disagree, even care? how will you know?

Commenting should be easy for your commenters. Don't seek to moderate dissent by putting hurdles in the way of dissenters: all you'll do is put off the moderate people, and ensure that only the most rabidly furious make it through to your blog. Requiring registration will put most people off: don't do it.

But do require name and email address. Though WordPress doesn't check the validity of the email address, most people do give you a real one, and I think that slight lack of anonymity does act to curb the worst excesses of keyboard-warrior behaviour.

Increase the number of allowed links above the default 2. Spammers who post lists of links post dozens, but many innocent commenters include a couple of links in a well-considered comment. Give those people a break.

If you want conversation on your blog, turn off admin approval. One of the nicest things that happens on any blog is when commenters start talking to each other; that's the point at which it's turned into a conversation. Having admin approve every comment stifles that, because conversations only really happen in real time. At the very least, turn on "commenter must have previously approved comment" so that you only need to approve the person: telling your regular commenters that you *still* don't approve them and *still* need to check everything they say before you publish it, tells them that you don't trust them. Worse still, if you can't moderate comments quickly, it sends out messages like their opinion isn't important, or (in the extreme) that you're censoring them.

photo credit: Rob Gallop

This isn't to say that you have to publish everything. Use the moderation list in a way that's meaningful for your content. A comments policy can also help your readers to know beforehand what's acceptable; it can also help you if you decide not to publish a comment, to have a pre-existing document to point to, explaining exactly why something's not allowed. (At very least, you should probably decide, and state, what level of sweariness you'll permit.)

Be careful with the blacklist filter. This matches partial words, so - as the form says - "press" will match "WordPress". Potentially this can turn it into a Scunthorpe filter, so add words sparingly and as needed.

It's okay to delete comments

I suffered over this one, but the conclusion I have come to is this: I believe that people have the right to free speech, and that means they have the right to their own blog. It does not mean they have the right to say what they like in my comments, particularly when they want to promote their own agenda in a way that makes things unpleasant for me and the rest of my readers. To put it rather more graphically, that everyone has the right to crap, doesn't mean they have the right to crap on my living room carpet. Remember: it's your blog.

"Unapprove"

Deleting is permanent, so throwing something into moderation so it's not visible on the published blog can be a way to give yourself time to calm down, think rationally, even take advice before you make the decision to let it stand, or remove it. From the admin section for Comments, you can "unapprove" individual comments, and they will be held awaiting your later approval.

Posted by Sue on May 18, 2009 in NPG2WP.