Allow Others to Comment… Make it as Easy as You Can
Since the Commenting Challenge started, I really have been working hard by commenting on blogs, especially the ones I am visiting for the first time. Since the Challenge started, Langwitches has also received more comments than ever before. I am tracking with Technorati any mention of comment08, as well as receiving Pingbacks on posts on Langwitches.
Twice I have run into a problem now, that I WANTED to comment was not able to or had a hard time.
The first time was on I hope it Works from Ronaldo Lima. His blog is a Blogger account. After typing in my comment in the pop up window, double checking that I was automatically logged in with my Google/Blogger account and hitting the submit button, the comment just would not post and brought me back to the same pop up window. Still with my text in the comment box. Luckily, I had copied the text of my comment to my clipboard before and did not loose it completely.
The second time, I clicked my way through from a pingback to one of my posts to Defining Blogging in Education on Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD . It is a WordPress blog hosted by edblogs.org . I wanted to leave a comment to acknowledge that I had read her thoughtful response.
First I was a little stumped. I had to log in to comment? With what? Then I checked that it was a edublog blog and tried my edublg username/password combination. That did not work and I became unsure of what I could do next to leave my comment. Should I look for a contact form or e-mail address somewhere on the blog? I created an edublog account several months ago and really have not used it much, so I decided to try another username/password combination (maybe the first one I entered was wrong) and voila: I was suddenly logged in and the comment box appeared for me to leave my comment.
BUT … I almost had given up hence leaving without acknowledgment to the blog owner that I had pass through and had appreciated her time and effort she put into writing the blog.
I wonder how many others pass by a blog, would like to leave a comment. but run into a minor a major problem or inconvenience and give up and click on?
- Pop up windows
- Spam protection words not legible or mistyped
- Login in with Google, Open ID, Edublog etc accounts.
If you don’t receive comments on your site… maybe there is a problem in the commenting process. Post a test comment to see if it will appear. Make sure that you are logged out of your administrator account too, when you are testing in order to imitate a visitor to your site.
Make it as easy as you can for someone to leave a comment. Many will move on if there are too many obstacles to overcome.
I’ve had difficulty leaving comments in the past. Sometimes I can’t find anything with the word “comment” on in order to leave the comment. I often wonder if these people feel under recognized for their writing efforts. I also don’t like when the anti-spam device doesn’t recognize the code I’ve typed in. As soon as I start to have problems I copy my comment just in case it gets deleted. I’ve found this has saved me a few times.
@Kimberly,
Thank you for adding another valuable point for bloggers: Make sure that your blog’s theme shows the comment button in an obvious place and not hidden away somewhere. I have hunted for that button too before. Using the CTRL-C or Command-C to copy my text has become a habit of mine before I submit a post or a comment. Just in case…
I guess this is a little like the hassle we all go through with the letter verification. I try to comment on as many students’ posts as possible, but it’s certainly time consuming signing up and verifying each time.
[...] 8. Toggling the comment switch to anyone (rather than just logged in Edubloggers), in response to two people having problems contacting me and Silva’s post on the topic, Allow Others to Comment… Make it as Easy as You Can. [...]
Silvia
Thanks for pointing out the problems in trying to post comments on the Rumination’s Blog.
I hadn’t really thought about it when I was setting up the on / off switches in the blog pannel.
I did a bit of investigation and changed the switch, so hopefully now people can post more easily.
Add another one to the learning process. Apologies for your frustrations.
I found that I was having trouble with leaving comments for a bit. I wasn’t as clever as you to save the comment on on a clipboard before I sent it on its merry way. I’m wondering if this is your common practice and what spurred you to put your comments on a clipboard.
Thanks for sticking with your detective like work. We all benefit from the investigation
@Sarah
I have gotten in the habit of CTRL-C-ing almost everything before I save, post, submit or move things around. Too many times, I have lost something in the process, when my Internet connection went out in the middle of me posting and the Back button only returned an empty box or not included my newest edits.
Hi Silvia
Interesting points you bring out here about difficulties in commenting. The Blogger pop-up window actually saves your comment but doesn’t change. Your comment just appears at the botton with the edit window still open. Pop-up comment window of Blogger is a cool feature, but I guess the window should close when the user submits the comment (like the del.icio.us window).
I have encountered similar issues with WordPress that you mentioned. At least WordPress has a feature to turn off log in required for commenting. Microsoft’s Spaces also does not allow you to leave a comment without logging in, that too in using the passport. I gave up my first blog on Space because of that a year ago. Not sure if they have changed that.
I can relate to the difficulty Kimberley’s faced in identifying the Comments link. It can be hard to find in some blogs.
How comforting it is to learn that it’s not me, Silvia! Thanks for the confirmation. And good on you for taking steps to ensure a backup of sorts is made of your comment before attempting to submit it.
This same thing has happened to me so many times and not just with one type of blog site. Since the first time I encountered this disconcerting behaviour of blog sites I have aways pasted my comment into a Notepad file that’s saved on my desktop before trying to submit it.
There’s many a slip in the comment submit
For instance, just before I submitted this comment the ‘Submit’ button on your site was entirely obscured by an advert for spurious university degrees!
Ka kite
from Middle-earth
I was just thinking this morning that it is helpful to log off as admin of my blog and go back as I were a visitor for the first time and see what that experience is like.
Walk a few miles in the visitor’s shoes, so to speak.
I get so used to being the admin that I forget that not everyone has that privilege.
This post is a good reminder of the hurdles that one can face, and yet, some of these hurdles are there because of inappropriate spam and other bot-mail that can clog the system, right? It’s not just there for no reason. That’s important to keep in mind.
I guess we need to evaluate our blog based on how user-friendly we want it to be. If it’s mostly a one-way street (blogger, outward) and not a two-way avenue (blogger-visitor-blogger, etc), then the hurdles may not matter so much.
Me?
I want folks to be part of the community and so your post is helpful in looking at my blog in a new way.
Thanks
Kevin
[...] be looking at how the technology on your blog may or may not be inviting comments. Check out this post about some of the difficulties Silvia has seen in trying to leave comments at other blogs and make [...]
Like you, I’ve made a habit of copying the contents of my comments into the buffer before submitting. Many times, innocent web glitches that aren’t specific to the site in question will cause comments not to go through. And just like you said, the “Back” button usually dumps you right back into an empty comment box.
Part of what we’ve done to try to ease the commenting process is to avoid CAPTCHA. I know this opens our blogs up to spam, but it happens seldom enough that I’d prefer to deal with the occasional junk comment than to hassle my readers.
[...] Silvia’s frustration with trying to post a message on my blog early in the challenge was voiced in her blog Allow Others to Comment… Make it as Easy as You Can. [...]
[...] I didn’t have the problems that Silvia had earlier in this Comment challenge and I realized that for the most part these moms were making it as easy as they could to Allow Others to Comment. [...]
Constructive comments can add value to the main article by way of content and idea. Good comments also help search engines to identify the blogs clearly.
Silvia, many times I’ve just given up leaving comments after being frustrated with technical glitches, popups, etc.
One thing that you might consider in your own profile is adding your name to show in each of your posts. I was trying to see how I’d address you and looked for your name on the post and didn’t find it. I’d have to click your about page. It’s a very simple thing, but it makes it faster for commenters.