Have Laptop Will Travel

Lifehacker Guide to weblog comments

Originally posted on September 27, 2006 @ 1:33 pm

On September 16, 2006 I posted about doing some research on commenting on blogs and forums and found an article posted by Gina Trapani on Lifehacker.com and referenced a few good points that everyone should follow in my original post.

Shortly after that post I got to thinking that it would make a really nice guide for others to have on hand in download form, so I contacted Gina asking for permission to do just that, make a guide for download based on her article and just moments ago I received some exciting news via email:

Sure thing Sean, thanks for asking.

Gina Trapani – Editor
http://lifehacker.com

This made my day. I’ve been a reader of Lifehacker.com for quite some time now and to get the A-OK from the Editor to publish a great piece of work on my site is a huge honor!

You can now find the complete guide to weblog comments on my project page.

ALso, be sure to also check out the Guide to Blogging E-Metrics Simplified which is a work in progress by Doug Karr and myself.

Happy blogging!

Guide to Weblog Comments

Originally posted on September 16, 2006 @ 10:55 am

I was doing some research on some basic rules for people commenting on forums and blogs in general and found a decent article titled Guide to weblog comments and wanted to share since we’ve all seen comments go crazy from time to time on various forums as well as on our own sites or blogs.

A couple of the points from the article I’d like to highlight are things that I see a lot around various sites and forums and I’m sure you do too:

Stay on topic.

Bloggers enable comments on specific posts to hear more about the content of the post. Don’t change the subject. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing a comment on a post about Hurricane Katrina that reads, “By the way, do you know anything about turtles?”

Don’t comment for the sake of commenting.

Commenters who only say “First!” or “Nice site” on an open thread have no business hitting that “Post” button at all. Further, only spammers comment for the sake of adding their name and URL to a web page. Useless comments will gain you the reputation for being a useless commenter.

I suggest that my readers take a look at the article to see some of the guidelines that are pretty good food for thought and maybe start to use them in your daily work and personal life while commenting around the internet.

You can also download the complete guide to weblog comments from my project page.