About Comments and High-Traffic Blogs

You know, I've said a couple of times previously that in my opinion, blogs that don't take comments aren't really blogs -- they're just kind of bloggy.

I still think that holds true for normal, regular-people's blogs. But I think I have to take into account the specialized nature of the really high-trafficked, "A-List" blogs (or whatever you want to call the really popular blogs that get a lot of attention).

Case in point -- normally, Gawker has an invite-only comment policy. However, at 5pm this past Friday, they opened up commenting by posting a username and password that anyone could use.

Things went downhill from there [language warnings -- I mean, it is Gawker after all]

They turned off open commenting after 30 minutes. I'm not sure if they deleted any comments, but there are about 80 left, including some by their invited commenters.

The really high-traffic blogs are a different kind of animal; because they're so popular, they attract a lot of eyeballs, which means they also attract a lot of attention from people who are attracted by a lot of eyeballs.

This group of people includes:

Spammers -- people who want to try to drive traffic to their affiliate marketing Web site (or whatever) for monetary gain.
Self-Promoters (a.k.a. "Attention Whores") -- people who want visitors to their Web pages or blogs. This isn't so bad in itself, but the lengths they'll go to drop their URL, usually in a manner that doesn't even pretend to be relevant, is what kills things.
Morons -- Generally, people who just want to piss in the punch bowl (Can you tell I've been reading Gawker? They probably would have used a different bodily function, though) -- people who want to get a thrill from anonymously saying naughty things where lots of other people will see them.

Gawker is probably also a special case, since their content usually is centered around bad words and naughty thoughts -- live by the sword, die by the sword, eh?

Anyway, there are lots of different strategies for trying to moderate lots and lots of comments, but best ones involve devoting human resources to the job, which some folks aren't prepared to deal with. (Peer moderation is another strategy -- having fellow readers and commenters take a role in policing comments -- that's worked to varying degrees.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: high trafficked blogs, gawker, comment strategy, bloggy

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This entry has 9 comments: (Add your own)

#9 Comment from chrissystevens1
5/28/08 10:56 PM | Permalink

I think the best way is to allow comments only from those with "open IDs" to avoid spammy comments; apart from that there's always comment moderation!
#8 Comment from mawmellow
8/1/06 9:12 AM | Permalink

I have received no alerts since Saturday. Help !! I talked with aol live tech support and they were no help !!! I'm in need of alerts !!!! Thanks
#7 Comment from monponsett
8/1/06 7:25 AM | Permalink

Yeah.... which AOL Journals get the most hits.

Not talking you or Scalzi, either... just regular, non-paid folks.
#6 Comment from monponsett
8/1/06 7:22 AM | Permalink

I've been called an Attention Whore before.

I've also been called a Recipe Whore, but that was in a Food Chat room.
#5 Comment from upseted
7/31/06 8:33 PM | Permalink

Last 'Big Brother' TV season, my AOL Journals product blog - http://journals.aol.com/etvjackie/BigBrother6LiveFeedReportsandMor/ hit a half million hits in three months. I always left comments open and didn't have trouble with spam. Sometimes I had to stop commenters from squabbling with each others. Sometimes I had 50 - 100 comments on a single entry.

I relocated the blog to Blogspot, leaving comments open to anyone. A couple of weeks ago I had to add word verification as spambots got me with over a few hundred spam comments within a two day period.

I find I can't always reply to every comment and don't even try. But, I love the comments and find it kind of builds its own little community. Right now, I'm nowhere near Gawker, but I'm getting around 5000 unique hits a day and nearly twice that in page views.

I think I may still hold the record for the most hits within three months, possibly even years, on an AOL Journal. ;-)

--Jackie
http://jackiestvblog.blogspot.com/

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About Comments and High-Traffic Blogs