{"id":14335,"date":"2010-07-03T09:03:13","date_gmt":"2010-07-03T09:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mysocialmediasolution.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2010-07-03T09:03:13","modified_gmt":"2010-07-03T09:03:13","slug":"moderate-comments-at-your-blog-using-these-7-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/public-relations\/moderate-comments-at-your-blog-using-these-7-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Moderate comments at your blog using these 7 tips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/checkmark-on-black-square-box2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-419\" style=\"float: left;margin-left: 10px;margin-right: 10px;margin-top: 6px;margin-bottom: 6px\" title=\"checkmark on black square box2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/checkmark-on-black-square-box2.jpg\" alt=\"blue checkmark in black square\" width=\"160\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a>By Joan Stewart<\/p>\n<p>One of the most frequent questions from beginning bloggers is how to moderate comments.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re afraid to allow comments &#8220;that criticize me or my company.&#8221; They don&#8217;t know whether to edit comments with a heavy hand, or not at all. Or whether to allow links to other people&#8217;s blogs and websites. And they&#8217;re not quite sure how to stop the glut of spam comments.<\/p>\n<p>Here are seven tips that will help you moderate \u00a0comments at your blog. Notice I said &#8220;moderate.&#8221; That means the comment does not show up unless you approve it. All reputable blog platforms give you the power to moderate, and you should use it.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Allow comments that criticize you and your company, as much as it hurts. This makes for a more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/blog\/how-engaging-is-your-blog-17-metrics-to-measure\" target=\"_blank\">interesting and engaging \u00a0blog<\/a>, and it gives you the chance to respond to the person who commented.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>Delete comments that simply say &#8220;great post.&#8221; Often, the commenter simply wants a backlink to a website or blog.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>Decide how you&#8217;re going to deal with four-letter words and other obscenities. This blog, and my own blog at PublicityHound.net, are for business audiences. I remove obscenities and other material I determine offensive, but this is seldom a problem.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>Do you allow people leaving comments to include links? Some bloggers don&#8217;t, but I do because it&#8217;s helpful to readers who are sometimes looking for other sources of information. If a link is obivous spam, I remove it.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>If you wish, you can limit the length of comments. I don&#8217;t because if somebody is willing to take the time to offer in-depth commentary, I consider that a compliment. It shows they care.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>Beware of commenters who personally attack others. You can be held liable for any material that appears at your blog, including anything libelous. The definition of libel is &#8220;reckless disregard for the truth.&#8221; If in doubt, leave it out.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/li>\n<li>Consider a comments policy for your blog that spells out what you will and won&#8217;t allow. You can read about comments policies <a href=\"http:\/\/www.problogger.net\/archives\/2005\/11\/03\/problogger-comments-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogherald.com\/2007\/09\/04\/does-your-blog-have-a-comments-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As for all that spam, blog platforms often have plug-ins that move most spam comments into a spam folder, where you can delete it. This is a WordPress blog, and we use the excellent Akismet plug-in that removes almost all spam.<\/p>\n<p>What ground rules do you follow when moderating comments? \u00a0If you don&#8217;t allow comments at blog, why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Joan Stewart One of the most frequent questions from beginning bloggers is how to moderate comments. They&#8217;re afraid to allow comments &#8220;that criticize me or my company.&#8221; They don&#8217;t know whether to edit comments with a heavy hand, or not at all. Or whether to allow links to other people&#8217;s blogs and websites. And\u2026&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/public-relations\/moderate-comments-at-your-blog-using-these-7-tips\/\" class=\"rmlink\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":1,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-14335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-public-relations","7":"tag-blogging","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}