Comment Moderation

The primary objectives in comment moderation are to prevent spam comments from being seen, get a heads up on negative feedback and remove anonymous “trolls.”

Who are Troll Commenters?

Online trolling is when some random reader decides to take it upon themselves to be a negative nancy. This troll hates life, your blog, and your post and just wants to complain for no good reason or they come up with some fake reason. Whatever the case may be, they don’t have the gumption to say any of these hideous comments and attach their sullied name to it. You see a lot of trolls with fake YouTube accounts, but some still use their real names, basically they are just assholes. Feel free to not post their comments, and responding to a troll will probably only make it worse, so leave it up to your community to deal with them or just remove their selfish banter. Think of them as an online bully with nothing better to do.

Aww the Dirty, Nasty, Annoying Spam Types

I tried to keep my thoughts on spammers as clean as I could, but I just don’t have a lot of nice things to say about these people. Spammers may be bots built by humans or just people who are bored in their mom’s basement. They are the India SEO people, who are trying to sell a range of products from SAT products, to men’s pills, to essays for term papers. These people leave sales/marketing type messaging as a comment and generally add 2-20 links to all their dumb sites. These people are basically leaches on a good community base. I’m not saying adding a link into a comment is bad, by all means add it with your signature, but you had better have something to add to the community with that comment.

OH NO! I just got my first negative comment, now what?!

If you write long enough eventually someone will disagree with you. They may love your writing, have always hated you, or maybe you flat out made a dumb statement. Negative comments are not the end of the world. I remember when they used to almost give me an ulcer, because I would over think the criticism. Don’t take it too personally. The difference between a troll and a negative comment is intention. A troll just hates life, while a negative comment is relevant and might even add value to your community. You can’t be right about EVERYTHING, although I sure wish I could, so these people add their two cents. I say they may be adding value because allowing them to diversify your comments shows that your moderation isn’t over stepping any boundaries, you still allow your community to have a voice and start conversations. You never know maybe their thoughts may change your opinion on a certain post.

When to respond to negative comments

Let’s start with Trolls, I’d say don’t waste your breathe. I’ve had the full gammit of comments on my YouTube channel and all my blogs. People have told me I look hot, slutty, stupid, that my opinions are worth sand, I’m a hack, or that I should just shut up. If they really think those things.. I’m not sure why they waste the 5-10 minutes out of their day to watch my whole videos and then comment on them. Now on the other hand if they tell me my lighting is bad, I look cheesy in a certain outfit, or that I have a spelling error that is something valid and constructive. If it is an opinion you may want to address it and allow it to be posted. If the comment is about spelling you may just want to fix it and not post that comment publically.

Photo Credits: by Laughing Squid & by itslefty

Hope that helps, feel free to leave me a comment. The best kind are the constructive kind, ones that add value to the conversation or expand on what I just wrote. Not just, “Hey great post.” Add what you REALLY think, why you loved it or hated it.