The Reader Appreciation Project » Series

Breaking Blogosphere Obligations? Comment Communication

Bes — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:37:44 +0000

A contact of mine was recently asking about the idea of me creating a blog for them. Among the many things he wanted, he asked “I just have to figure out how to respond to any future comments within an hour or so.” I told the person that they did not need to feel obligated to respond to comments, and that they did not need to have comments in the first place. It was their personal blog, and they could have anything they wanted without feeling obligated to do what the blogosphere was doing. The person just looked at me bewildered and then started laughing as if I was joking that it was not necessary to respond quickly or to even have a comments section.

This is the first in a series of articles where I will focus on some blogosphere obligations where many people assume that doing something is required, when in reality doing such a thing may cause harm or more harm than good. As the above example shows, today I would like to focus on the communication aspect of obligations when it comes to commenting. This is critical in appreciating, for commenting because of obligation means you are not commenting to appreciate but to fulfill an obligation, a duty that you feel exists on a level higher than the level of appreciation.

The obligations listed below are slowly becoming the norm on any new blog, where the blogger is usually criticized if they do not follow the same bandwagon as the rest of the blogosphere. Let us start with the idea of enabling comments, then disabling comments, and then working our way through responding to comments as an idea and responding to comments individually as a practical act.

Enabling comments

Is it an obligation to enable comments? Simply having comments as an obligation is not a good thing. I would rather have no comments than to have a comments area that I have kept as an obligation. Not having comments is not a bad thing: when you have reasons that do not manipulate others, you can do many things without feeling any obligation. Many people can have comment alternatives, and many people simply want to talk. Sure, simply talking and not listening can be considered bad in many aspects, but if someone wants to talk with a good heart and not manipulate others to their disadvantage, there does not seem to be anything wrong with it unless they also want to make sure that other people involved in their talks do not benefit from such talks.

Now, this very obligation of enabling comments is abused when performed on many major blogs: many blogs enable comments and think they have done a huge favor to everyone, a favor that cannot be repaid. In such cases, appreciation is usually a fake form of marketing tactic employed to gain more commentors and to retain many existing ones. Simply enabling communication does not mean you are better: it means you now have a new world of commentors that you can abuse or help. With enabled comments come a lot of new responsibilities. Whether you help or manipulate the commentors, to better your site ranking, income, popularity, etc, also decides whether or not your act of enabling the comments was good for the readers in addition to being good for you and your site. This is very important when measuring the honesty level of any of your appreciation efforts.

Disabling comments

A small, yet growing number of blogs are starting to disable their comments once they reach a certain stage where the number of new visitors outpaces the number of loyal or returning visitors. Many times, some blogs and bloggers feel that it is an obligation to disable comments when the number of comments are too large to be handled by the owners of the blog. Keeping that in mind, is it an obligation to turn off the comments if a blogger cannot maintain the comments section of their blog properly? Turning off comments may seem like a good solution for many very popular sites and blog. However, not all communication revolves around the blogger maintaining the comments section, and thus not disabling comments in every situation can work out well also in many cases. Disabling comments can mean both appreciation and no appreciation, depending on each situation and blogger.

This very obligation of disabling comments is abused many times on many other levels also. One aspect of disabling comments is the idea of turning off comments on posts that cause controversy, or posts where the blogger feels that the amount of damage the comments can cause outweigh the benefits of having comments enabled for those certain posts. I feel that the obligation of disabling comments on posts simply to stop any conflict or something similar is not always a mature decision that benefits parties other than the blogger: disabling comments simply causes people to basically shut up, and does not address the very issue of the conflict itself. Do we only want others to talk because we want them to say thins we want to hear? If I remember correctly, I have never disabled comments on any of my posts even if there is a lot of hatred in different comments, and I am very happy that I did not. If you do decide to disable comments, you should keep in mind that disabling comments is not always a solution: it is a tool to come up with a solution.

Responding to all comments

The art of responding to comments is slowly becoming an obligation in the eyes of a growing number of bloggers, not because it allows for the communication and people to actually do something, but because many bloggers feel that if someone talks, someone else has to respond. Is it an obligation to respond to all comments? There has to be a reason why someone would think so, and it is very immature to think that all comments need a response simply because someone at RA Project says so. Your own reason needs to be developed, and you need to decide whether or not you want to respond to all comments. Responding to all comments does not always necessarily mean appreciation we I will explain a bit briefly below.

It is not a bad thing to not respond to all comments, and it is not bad to not respond to all comments immediately. I like responding to people and thoughts, and not comments. That is why many times I try to take my focus away from the comments area and into e-mails, texts or other forms of communication. I have about a 100 or so comments I need to respond to as of today, and I am taking my sweet time in writing up responses to all of them and making sure I communicate with the people both through comments and away from the comments area: I have to think about many things, and have to come up with honest opinions and responses to ensure I communicate what I want to say, whether it is through a single sentence or a few paragraphs. My focus is on the communication with that person and understanding the topic at hand, and not to show how fast I reply or to show the blogosphere my comment response rate.

Of course, it is interesting to see a lot of new bloggers trying to do the same with completely different intentions, intentions that usually revolve the idea that if one does not respond to all comments, someone will surely criticize that blogger or blog. As with the other obligations of communication through comments, this obligation of responding to all comments is abused by many people: many people are replying to each and every comment because they feel it is their job to do so. They do it to increase the popularity of their blogs, and they also respond like robots to everyone, thanking everyone for their comment whether or not they actually want to thank them. “Thank you” seems like the new “I love you“, thrown out anytime we want to start a canned response that is customized a little bit to show that we are acting like humans.

Responding to individual comments individually

This goes along with the obligation of responding to all comments. Responding to individual comments individually means that you respond to each separate comment and commentor with a new, separate comment response different and apart from all of your other comment responses. Many people write a single response to all commentors, and many people write a single comment addressing all commentors individually. Still, many other people reply to each commentor separately. You are not obligated to do any of these. You have to decide yourself how you wish to address each commentor. It is slowly becoming a commercialized idea to respond to individual comments and to respond to several comments as whole through a single comment and a single thought, when all these years personal blogs have been doing it time and over again without wanting anything, and without feeling obligated, and through other styles also. Appreciation through individual responses can help, but appreciation is not guaranteed simply because one responds to individual comments individually.

Now, the very act of responding to individual comments is abused also. Many people respond individually in order to increase their comment count. Many people do it because they feel obligated, and because they “have” to respond to each comment in order to gain more readers and in order maintain current readers. The very feeling of wanting to respond without wanting anything in return other than the other person’s good feeling, whether or not they stay, is going away. Many people feel obligated to respond to comments because they simply feel that they have to keep up with the blogosphere. I know of so many bloggers who come along and start responding to individual people, that when you stop going to their site, they distance themselves and focus only on the people who comment on their side. In my view, this obligation has played one of the major roles in destroying the human connection and the concept of friendship that people may have had in the online world.

What do you think?

The above are the 4 different and major obligations when it comes to communicating through comments, and these obligations play a huge role in determining whether or not one is appreciating or whether one is simply fulfilling their blogging obligation. From enabling to disabling comments to the idea of responding to comments to the act of responding to individual comments, the different forms of comment interaction allow people to either feel obligated into doing something or to avoid something because of the same obligations. Those are the different communication through comments related obligations that many bloggers, if not the majority, feel daily while running their blogs. An obligation with a reason can be good, while an obligation without a personal reason can be bad. The above points are both good and bad, depending on what the underlying reasons for their existence are.

Can you think of any time when you ran into any situation related to any of the above points? Have you seen anyone do any of the above in a good or bad manner? How much impact do you think these obligations and trends have on appreciation, as a blogger, as a reader and as a commentor?

Thank you for reading. Stay tuned for the next time when we tackle the obligation of communicating by posting regularly.

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Breaking Blogosphere Obligations? The Series

Bes — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:49:59 +0000

You have to sit in the same bus seat throughout a bus trip. You have to face the elevator doors when you are in an elevator. You have to avoid looking at someone who falls down, even if you want to make sure they are ok. With so many obligations that we try to fulfill, it seems that we have forgotten why something is an obligation in the first place, and whether or not such an obligation is necessary or even good. The blogging world is no different.

Blogosphere likes obligations

We follow bloggers who make money. We try to cater to search engines more than catering to readers even if our main purpose of blogging is not to please search engines. We talk about topics revolving around money since everyone else makes money through that topic. We keep talking about being good to our readers, yet our actions and our selfish nature to want things makes us only use other online people and be nice to them only since we need things from them.

The Obligations Series

Starting today, I would like to elaborate on this point through a series of points revolving around some different elements that define blogging through different perspectives. The first point will be explained in my next post, and it will revolve around obligations we feel when it comes to communication through comments. I will tell you how I view the concept of communication through comments, and treating it as an obligation, as being something that is misunderstood by many, if not the majority, in the blogosphere.

Understanding the concept and the validity of obligations in any area where we want to appreciate others is very critical to appreciation itself; without such an understanding, we will most probably be faking appreciation or be simply doing random things without purpose while hoping to end up appreciating. I will also explain briefly how such following such obligations can be good in certain situations, and how avoiding such obligations can be bad in certain situations.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for this upcoming topic, or if you have any obligations that you would like me to cover. Thank you.

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10 Ways to Irritate Your Fellow Bloggers

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:42:06 +0000

All of us get irritated from time to time, especially as bloggers. I thought I’d end the Readers Behaving Badly series on a lighter note and give a list of ways to irritate your fellow blogger.

Submit a contact form ten times with the same message. If the blogger responds, respond back ten times, “Sorry, I think your form is broken.”
If the blogger is using FeedBurner, chances are he/she monitors who subscribes (and unsubscribes) via e-mail. Keep signing up and unsubscribing over a week period.
Leave a comment saying, “I disagree” without explaining yourself.
Make a “U Suck” badge and announce daily winners.
Start yet another “Make Money Online” blog.
Link to someone and then demand you return the favor or else you’ll take the link off and unsubscribe from their feed.
Start another “blog awareness day” and this time make it have to deal with cats.
Scrape the bloggers content, make money off it using Ad Sense, and brag to the blogger via e-mail what you made off of their content.
Start a new blog and dedicate it to the love affair you are having with a fellow blogger. Describe in painstaking detail the love triangle and breakup that follows.
If a blogger has a “Buy me a beer” widget on their blog, find an empty beer bottle and snail mail it to the blogger.

Thank you for reading the final post on the series of Readers Behaving Badly. If you have any more ways to irritate your fellow blogger, please leave a comment.

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Readers Behaving Badly - the WordPress Joe Job

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:01:30 +0000

A Joe Job is when users of a site are sent spoofed e-mails. These e-mails are filled with all kinds of spam and are intended to tarnish and forever damage the owner of the site. Readers who have received such e-mails can e-mail back, report the site to spam authorities, and even launch their own attacks.

As a WordPress plugin and theme author, it is scary to know that most WordPress blogs can easily be victims of such Joe Jobs. All a plugin or theme author would have to do is build in some kind of back door. If a popular enough site has the plugin or theme installed (and the author is malicious enough), the author can execute the code remotely and all hell can break loose.

Do you think this scenario is too unrealistic? It’s already happened on a large scale on WordPress 2.1.1 (although no damage really occurred).

Here’s what a modern-day WordPress Job Job would look like.

User Installs Theme or Plugin With Malicious Code

When the plugin or theme is activated, the author of the malicious code is e-mailed. Obviously if the author knew what they were doing, none of this would be traceable.

Since the author is e-mailed, the author knows exactly which blogs have his/her code ready to be executed.

Author Runs Malicious Code on User’s Site

The author then runs the code on the user’s site. The author is sent the e-mails of every commentator the site has ever had.

Armed with e-mail addresses, the author is ready to start the Joe Job.

Readers Are Sent Spoofed E-mails

A highly targeted spam campaign is waged against the readers of the user’s site. The user’s return e-mail address is used, and readers are more than happy to express their dissatisfaction.

Readers send in e-mails wondering what is going on, feed subscribers unsubscribe, and the readers start leaving nasty comments. Readers who have blogs begin to blog about this user in a very negative way.

The user has no idea what has happened and what the cause is. And the author of the malicious code is just lurking in the background as the readers of the site rebel.

Far-Fetched Scenario?

Hardly. When was the last time you checked the code of your plugins or themes? You never know what you might find and how trustworthy the plugin or theme author really is.

Fortunately the WordPress community is very vigilant and something like this wouldn’t last long. But it is always a good idea to make sure the plugins or themes you install are legit.

A Joe Job can be devastating for any site, but a Joe Job targeted at a site’s readers can be even more so.

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Readers Behaving Badly - the Leech

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:00:22 +0000

A leech is a person who clings to another for personal gain without giving anything in return. A leech comes with the implication or effect of exhausting the other’s resources. A leech is a parasite. (From dictionary.com)

We all know (or should know) what a leech is like in real life. They’re the friends that always expect you to give them rides or pay for their meal. They’re the roommates who haven’t paid rent for months, yet still eat your food and jack up your utility bill. But what does a leech look like when one moves into the online world?

Hmmm, Nice Photograph!

These readers steal the stock photography on your site. You know, the ones you paid at least a dollar a piece for on iStockPhoto?

Or better yet, these readers will cruise your Flickr account and steal some of your more personal work and place it on their site with no credit whatsoever.

Can I Use Your Bandwidth?

On top of some readers stealing the images on your site, some readers don’t have the courtesy of actually saving the image and uploading it to their own site. These readers are fully content to link directly to your image and piggyback on your bandwidth. Fortunately there are ways to combat image hotlinking.

Better yet, how about linking directly to a PDF, ZIP file, or some other document rather than hosting it? Why use up one’s own bandwidth when one can use up yours?

Nice Idea. I Think I’ll Take It.

You’ve come up with a grand idea. And you have just discovered that one of your readers has taken it and claimed it as their own. I can see your skin begin to crawl and your face starting to turn red.

What can one do when you discover someone has stolen (err, borrowed permanently) an idea of yours? Do you call the reader out? Or do you just bite your lip and try to forget it?

I Don’t Care How Busy You Are. I Need Help Now!

I wrote on my personal site a while back about Sprint removing problem customers. These customers are a problem for the company because they take up too many resources as far as support goes.

Some readers can be compared to problem customers and sooner or later, it might be wise to just tell them to shove off.

I asked back in June if it is ever okay to lose a reader. While my opinion is still the same that one should try to keep all readers, some readers are simply too much of a burden. They might require too much “custom” support, might rip on every one of your points, might ceaselessly e-mail you, or some other activities that demand a great deal of your time. As far as return on investment goes, sometimes you just need to cut someone off.

As a plugin author, I’ve had a few people demand instant attention and threaten to give my plugin a negative rating on WordPress Extend if I didn’t help them. Threatening a plugin author who provides something for free is not a good way to win a friend.

Conclusion

Just like vampires can suck a victim dry, some readers demand all the attention, but give nothing back. They can leech on your bandwidth, your ideas, and your time. If you have any more examples of “leechy” behavior, please share them in the comments.

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Readers Behaving Badly - the Attack of the Troll

Ronald Huereca — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:00:08 +0000

Nobody likes trolls. Well, except maybe masochistic bloggers. Trolls are the sludge at the bottom of a trash can. Trolls are the tar that pollutes a smoker’s lungs. And trolls just plain suck.

This article (based on a real attack) will delve into an attack of a troll and how a troll can infect all around it.

Trolls are a Virus

Trolls outside of a community are harmless. But trolls are on the prowl, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to infect the host.

The host may have done nothing wrong. But the host opened itself up to attack and at the most vulnerable moment, the troll crept in.

The Troll Attacks

The troll may not attack the host from the beginning. It may lay dormant for a while, perhaps going after some of the community members. The incidents are isolated, and hardly anybody takes notice.

But then, out of nowhere, the troll strikes, and strikes hard. It leaves that damaging comment that is intended to arouse anger. You do your best to quickly delete the comment, but it’s too late. The troll has left the impression on the community.

The Troll Mutates

Having blocked the IP of the troll and deleted his comment, the troll is forced to mutate into some other form, even harder to repulse. The troll gathers friends, who strike at numerous posts throughout the site. Community members are targeted personally, and the community starts to fight back with their own comments of anger.

The Site Gets a Fever

As the trolls make comments faster than you can delete them, the site suffers. You are forced to turn off comments. You disable your contact box. Your readers are fed up because they are being targeted on their own sites. The infection has spread elsewhere. You’re on your own in this battle, and the only thing you can do is wait it out.

The Trolls Eventually Leave

You have survived your first troll attack. And your readers have too. You turn back on your comments and apologize for the incident. You now know what to look for when the next troll tries to infect your community.

Conclusion

There should be a special place in hell reserved just for trolls. But trolls are a fact of life. One must recognize the troll and quickly extinguish the threat. But even eliminating the threat early does not guarantee the troll won’t make a harsher attack in the future.

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Readers Behaving Badly - Comment Rage

Bes — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 07:49:42 +0000

Many people online get upset over some topic and get offended on a personal level immediately. Instead of focusing on the issue, many people focus on their own self and start addressing an issue as if it was a personal attack on them.

Many reactionary comments and posts to different issues can be considered results of taking things too personally, while many critical and logical reactionary comments and posts about different issues can be labeled as being results of taking things too personally in order to degrade them.

Below I would like to talk about the definition of something called comment rage, a blog example where a form of comment rage flows in both directions, about whether or not comment rage can ever be justified, and some signs of comment rage.

What is comment rage?

Comment rage is simply a way to express comments written while one is emotional, angry, or taking things too personally, among a few other things. Comment rage can happen either directly via comments or readers posting their own blog posts as forms of comments. Not everyone reacts to the same thing in the exact same manner. Similarly, not all blog readers react to a certain topic in the same manner. Some people may congratulate you for writing a wonderful article, while others may feel personally attack you no matter what you write about. Such attacks can go from being using rude words to actually insulting someone with a lot of effort.

Some commentors taking things too personally on Spoken-for.org

One of the good examples of people taking things too personally is a 2005 post by Valerie titled “Why Geek Squad, Best Buy, and Compaq all suck” on Spoken-for.org. As you can guess from the title, Valerie in that post talked about her bad experience with Geek Squad. The post resulted in a lot of supporters and even more opposers, with many opponents personally attacking Valerie through insults.

Many of the comment responses she got were direct insulting attacks on her, simply because she had talked against those three companies. What is even more interesting is the reaction of some of the readers who responded by defending Valerie, and in turn attacked the very commentors, who were attacking Valerie, with one of the the most aggressive and offensive comment on that page.

I also commented on Valerie’s post, and it makes me wonder: Who was right? Who was wrong? Sure, topic wise, one can argue that the topic is right or wrong. But what about the reactions? Do some of the commentors have justification to attack Valerie because she attacked the reputation of some companies through her post? Do some of the commentors have the justification to defend Valerie by attacking those attackers?

Can comment rage ever be justified?

The answer to this question can be very alarming: relatively, yes, comment rage can be justified for many people. Imagine a situation where someone is blogging a post about the innocence of an accused murderer who is put on trial. The blogger may have reasons to think that the accused is innocent. A commentor may have reasons to beleive that the accused is guilty. Now, someone who hates murderers may comment on such a post and insult that blogger directly. To the blogger, being attacked personally may not be fair. To the commentor, attacking the blogger personally will be intentional and may be fair, as that commentor may consider their expression and disagreement to a blogger to be the same as taking action against a murderer.

Sure, the topic of the innocence of murderers has nothing to do with someone’s character, but in someone’s mind, supporting murderers in any manner can mean that someone is a #$%^& or a #$$%%&&^. If the blogger or another commentor sees such a comment with a personal attack, they can try to move the conversation away from the attacks and to the issue, if they wish. Avoiding putting the entire focus of a response comment to the question of why someone insulted the other person, without allowing the other person to explain themselves, can result in more hostility between the commentor and the blogger.

Sometimes people can use the idea of comment rage to quiet down people who disagree with them. I have myself questioned the monetary interests of some bloggers who try to tell their readers that something is good. Those bloggers feel personally offended, even though I never insult them, and I only ask questions and explain myself clearly. Does that classify me as someone who is taking things too personally? In the eyes of those bloggers, yes. How about in my view? I think my comments are perfect since they explain my reasoning and my feelings. The conclusion boils down to being relative in the eyes of many. For example, are Bes, Ronald and Simonne involved in comment rage when talking against John Chow in any manner? Not in my view. How about your view? Can the answer to this question be absolute?

Other signs of comment rage

There are many signs of comments where someone may be taking things too personally. Following are 5 of them. These are not clear identification tools; they are signs, which means there can be many times when such comments are simply disagreeing comments.

You talk about something non-personal and a commentor attacks you on a personal level.
A commentor focuses more on things in your personal life not relevant to the topic in question.
A commentor acting nice on some topics and bursting into anger, insults and disagreements over some specific topics.
You get criticized by someone, and someone else criticizes that critic on a completely new front without keeping any logic or reasoning in mind
Criticizing everyone else immediately without explaining anything a bit.

Conclusion

If you want to address the issue of comment rage, you have to be able to identify comments that exist solely to hurt you, and comments that exist because of taking something too personally and reacting with some kind of a virtual or non-virtual rage. Many times, the best way to get rid of comment rage is to lead the topic, and not the other person, towards the topic and away from both your and their personal feelings.

Comment rage exists in many forms online, with some very hostile comments because of people taking things too seriously when they should not, while at other times, people are labeled as being part of the comment rage crowd simply because they disagree or have something important to point out in things people do not want to be pointed out.

What do you think?

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Readers Behaving Badly - Comments Meant to Hurt

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:00:35 +0000

If you’ve been blogging for a while, it’s not that hard to think back and remember the first time you received a negative comment. The commentator might have called you a name, told you your article sucked, or perhaps something worse.

Not all readers are out there to make friends. Some are out for blood. And if these readers haven’t found you yet, be assured that they will.

Within this post I will give two examples of readers behaving badly with regards to comments. At the end of this post you will find further reading on how to respond to comments meant to hurt.

Ick, You’re Leaving a Nasty Comment

Sabena Suri, a seventeen year old intern at CNET News.com, wrote an article about how she doesn’t like it when older married people try to add her on facebook. Her article, “Ick, old married guys on Facebook“, drew a lot of attention. I personally didn’t get offended while reading the article. Even I, at 26, feel rather icky adding a nineteen year old to my facebook page. But when I read the comments the post generated, I was sickened.

One of the comments had the title of, “Ick, a snotty teenager on Facebook and CNET.” Another had the title of, “Look! A Bunch of Prejudiced Brats on Facebook.” And yet another comment had a title of, “Are the CNet editors on vacation?” Keep in mind these are just the comment titles. The words within are even harsher.

I don’t consider myself a newbie in this blogging game anymore, but if I received comments like that, I’d be very discouraged from writing another article. This lady is just starting her senior year of high school, and I can only imagine her feelings as she read those comments. She probably thought she had a well written and thought out article (I personally was impressed with her writing). And then the negative comments rolled in by the truckload.

What’s ironic about a lot of comments is that most are offended at being called old, yet are making comments of their own chastising someone for being too young and inexperienced.

Marketing Your Site is Common Sense?

AJ from Devlounge wrote an article on how to market your website. The article was well done and was written from past experience. But then the comments rolled in.

One commenter said this:

This article sucks, try to say something that’s not totally obvious please.

And then another:

:yawn: All common sense. zzzzz…

Did the above comments add to, or provide constructive criticism for the article in question? Not really. These comments were meant to hurt.

And Many, Many More Examples

Lorelle put it rather nicely when referring to mean-spirited comments:

Trolls. Flamers. Meanies. Vicious. Not Nice. Unkind. Rude. Inconsiderate. Nasty. Whining. Bitching. Moaning. Bastards.

Conclusion

Not all readers are out to make friends. Some react with emotion to the article you just wrote. Some are quick to go for the kill. If you’ve been a victim of readers behaving badly with regards to comments, please share your experience.

I suggest reading the following articles on how to deal with comments that are intended to hurt:

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Readers Behaving Badly - Introduction

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:00:39 +0000

Not all readers are angels. Some readers can be flat out rude.

Whether you are a blogger, site owner, forum moderator, or have some other medium where you receive reader feedback, not all readers behave. Some readers just behave badly.

Over the next few weeks, I will go over several examples of readers behaving badly. Within each of these posts, you are welcome to share your own examples.

I have about six total posts planned, but may alter that number based on reader feedback to the series.

I’d like to thank retroman for allowing me to use a variant of his blog title for the series: Christians Behaving Badly?

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Can You Think of Some Things to Avoid on Blogs?

Bes — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:11:04 +0000

The “Things To Avoid” Series has been a very successful one. We found out a lot of things that can be avoided on blogs, and the readers chipped in with comments that were not only amazing but also extremely informative. I think Ronald and Simonne did an amazingly wonderful job at expressing annoying things on blog, things that many of us usually do not even notice right away, let alone express with ease.

I would like to ask you today about things you think should be avoided on blogs. It could be anything you think was not covered in one of the “Things To Avoid” posts. Do you agree with the different elements presented during this series? Have you noticed something else that you think should or can be avoided on blog posts, blog comments, or on any part or aspect of a blog in general? Do you think you yourself can avoid something on your blog if you had the chance to?

Please let us know what you think. On behalf of everyone at RA Project, thank you so much for reading and participating.

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Things to Avoid - Drooling Over a-Listers

Bes — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:13:45 +0000

Who is the only blogger in the world you worship the most? Now, if you have a blog and that A-list blogger that you worship one day tells you, without any explanation, to quit blogging, would you do it? If not, why? Because quitting your blog affects you directly. You will think twice before you quit blogging simply because an A-list blogger told you to.

If you apply the same concept to everything A-listers or A-list bloggers say, you will end up drooling less over A-list bloggers and thinking more about what they say. If you are a person who praises A-listers simply because they are A-listers, even the zombies in zombie movies are smarter than you, since many zombies think outside the box.

Biggest reason for drooling over A-listers: Too scared to disagree

Take John Chow’s post about having people pay John to have their nofollow comment tags. In response to that, you could see some people embracing the idea right away, because for them, John is probably God. Take the following comment, to John’s post, by Monetize Your Blog, which says:

it’s a great idea nevertheless

There is no reason offered for such a comment; for that commentor, the idea is great because John said it and because it makes money for John and people who can pull it off. There is no regard for blog readers and commentors who will get affected by such an idea. Other commentors usually doubt a bit, but they still side with the supposed A-list blogger in the end, like Kumiko’s comment:

I think it’s a great idea, but I’m a little worried what it’s going to do the comments here.

I love this site, butt since the Top Commentators plugin started, the comments really started to get a little more spammy…like 5 of the first 6 comments in this post being from “Monetize your blog” and now people are paying, there may just be a few more useless comments to get their money worth! Oh well, I’ll wait and see and may even buy in myself!!

Kumiko

The comment praises the idea more than once, and even in the end, Kumiko says she wants to try the idea depending on how many customers John gets. I like a lot of things Kumiko says on her own blog, since she sometimes, with logic, tends to go against the crowd, like her post saying that Agloco is a bad idea. She has the nerves to disagree with John with logic, which is nice, but she still sides with him in the end and gives his idea a go-ahead.

I am not sure why people are scared to disagree with pride on popular blogs. Will people stop visiting our blogs if we start disagreeing with A-listers? We disagree with small-time bloggers, but we cannot do the same with A-listers. Did John ask you before implementing his idea? No, he didn’t. You were nothing for him. However, you consider John to be such a powerful God that you cannot even post a 100% disagreeing comment. Wow.

People who drool over A-listers harm the blogosphere

It is not someone online, who has a bad idea that hurts others, that is to blame completely. It is the supporters and the commentors. These people support A-listers in everything, without considering the welfare and prosperity of others. If these people read a blog post by an A-list blogger which says “Breath, it is good for your body“, these mindless supporters will drool over that post with comments like “Wow, what a wonderful idea! I knew I had to breath but I didn’t know it was good for your body! I love you!! xoxoxo”

People who follow others online without thinking have the tendency to do the same in the offline life because they probably have personal issues. They cannot express themselves, and they want attention and approval from someone. If they disagree with someone, they feel secluded, since their happiness revolves around the concept of sucking up and keeping someone famous happy. These people do not realize that observing role models is better than mimicking them.

Stop being a mindless zombie.

It is nice to drool over ideas you like. It is stupid to drool over ideas only because someone you dream about every few minutes said it. Try it yourself: drool over an idea you like, and drool over someone you like expressing any idea, specially if the idea is a bad one, in your comment or blog post. See which one gives you more pride and dignity, and a sense of logic and reasoning.

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Things to Avoid - Over Monetization

Bes — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:40:21 +0000

I am excited to announce that from next week, Ronald, myself and Simonne have decided to turn this site into a Pay Per View Blog. The next time you type in www.raproject.com into your browser, you will be taken to our payment page where you will be required to pay only $14.99 a month, either through credit card or Paypal, in order to view our website. If you do not pay, you will be blocked from this site.

Imagine if the above were true. Would you go to any site that did not even show you a preview or a general idea of what it offered until you paid for it? We are slowly moving towards such a blogosphere, where many bloggers are simply starting to focus on appreciating and taking care of money while completely ignoring their readers. For such bloggers, readers can be mindless drones who are either too dumb to pay money to do basic things, or too dumb to have enough money and thus can be ignored. You can decide yourself what kind of a dumb reader you are. There is nothing wrong with making money while providing useful content to readers, but there is something wrong with making money while providing an illusion of useful content to others.

Over-Monetization Is Harmful in 5 Ways

Here is a short list of things that many bloggers are monetizing, or thinking of monetizing, even though their blogs do not have anything useful to offer to people who are not willing to spend the money.

Comments do not matter - the money from the commentor does:

Ronald recently talked about not caring about innocent commentors. Slowly, bloggers are starting to abuse the money-making principle by letting the quality of the comments go down the drain. More and more people are going to focus on buying links on blogger’s sites instead of leaving useful comments. On such blogs, the text “Leave a comment below” should be changed to “Buy a comment link below.“
Reading experience becomes intrusive due to ads
Many bloggers are plastering ads all over their websites. I know of at least 7 blogs that have a page full of ads, and even the logo and the navigation system on those blogs start on the 2nd page, after you have scrolled down from the ads. I am not sure if bloggers simply want to annoy readers who come to sites to read anything other than ads, or if bloggers are competing for the “Worst ways to make money while annoying readers, yet still making money!” awards.
Interaction with the blogger becomes a feeling of inferiority
I was talking to someone on the phone recently, and they told me they will stop contacting John Chow with tips and suggestions because his writing and attitude prefers commentors with money and not commentors who have good ideas and good skills to exercise those ideas. The internet could have been used to promote a feeling of equality on many levels among different people. Unfortunately, due to many things including money, many bloggers and commentors are already feeling inferior because they focus on quality instead of their money to get themselves ahead and heard.
The rich push the rich-poor system onto the internet
Those with money will be able to benefit by having their comments linked by more search engines, whereas the poor will either have to see webpages with full ads or find websites which do not require payments in order to be seen. The rich will keep getting richer, whereas the poor will not even be able to find any useful information on many blogs. They will simply have to go to Wikipedia or Reader Appreciation Project for free information for now.
Quality content becomes harder to find for most people
It is funny that the focus of bloggers who are trying to monetize every possible channel of content and income have not improved their blogs. They have only improved their celebrity status, and not what they are able to do or offer to themselves and others. It’s like me running a cheese shop; I keep selling the same kinds of cheese to shoppers, but soon, as I get more customers, I start hiding cheese under blue bags. I start a program “Preview cheese before buying! Pay $25 and be able to lift the blue bag from any cheese product! Actual purchase of cheese costs extra!” Would you still buy cheese from me? I sure hope so!

What do you think? Actually, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to charge you to let me know what you think, and for you to charge me to let me know what you think.

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Things to Avoid - Blogging About Not Blogging

Ronald Huereca — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:00:28 +0000

Just wanted to apologize about the lack of posts around here. Things have been busy with my school and work schedule. Expect the posts to pick up soon. For updates, please subscribe to the feed.

Enough is Enough - Stop Blogging About Not Blogging

If you go through as many feeds as I do, the last thing you want to see is another post about not being able to blog. It brings attention to your blog (in a bad way) and only gives lip service to your dedication to your readership.

There are exceptions to this, such as emergencies and extended vacations where blogging (and future posting) are not possibilities.

A “Not Blogging” Analogy

Imagine calling someone and the call goes straight to voice mail. The voice mail message states, “I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now. I’ll try to get back to you, but due to my hectic schedule, I may not. I’ll try not to be so busy in the future. Bye.”

Would you not think that leaving that voice mail would be a waste of your time? At the same time, going to a site or reading a feed that says, “Sorry for not posting” is an insane waste of time. I don’t come to a site to read about someone not being able to blog. I come to a site to read content. If that content isn’t there and all I get is excuses, then it’s bye bye time.

ProBlogger has some useful tips on what to do if you are too busy to blog. Hare are some more suggestions:

Have a Post Ready

Bes (The Reasoner) suggested that if you do happen to write a post apologizing for the lack of updates, there better be a post with some real content also.

Have Guest Bloggers

Another way to get posts on a site when content is lacking is to allow guest bloggers. Unless you have a good network of friends, it’s difficult to find guest bloggers in your niche. Fortunately there is a new service (that I have yet to try out) called Guest Blogger that looks really promising.

Simply Don’t Post

When I am too busy to blog, I simply don’t post. I don’t like to fill my blog with meaningless “I can’t post” posts.

Have Re-Runs

If you simply can’t post, why not write a short paragraph describing a post you’ve written in the past. If people are interested, they’ll click on it and read. If not, at least you tried.

Conclusion

What do you think about blog posts that just apologize for the lack of posting. Do they actually help?

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Things to Avoid: What Makes Me Nervous When Reading Your Blog

Simonne — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:00:19 +0000

The following are things to avoid on your blog.

The very, very small fonts, as if you wanted to fit all of them into the 800×600 box, because you heard that readers don’t like to scroll down. Luckily, I know that the shortcut keys combination “Ctrl +” can make fonts display bigger. Other readers don’t.
The light gray text on slightly darker gray background, as if some virtual fog descended from the virtual sky upon your blog. Do you want me to read with my fog lights on? Or maybe you get commissions from some ophthalmologist association.
Navigation made easy only for those who use sextants and compasses. Or maybe you want to increase the time spent on page by cutting all the ways which lead to other pages?
The beautiful, informative Snap Shots of all your links. Extremely useful if you want to awaken your sleepy readers. Believe me, a sleepy reader is better than one that went away.
The “cool” things you put on your blog: how much your blog is worth, what kind of reader are you, which is your hair colour, why aren’t you taller… if only they loaded a little bit faster!
Your missing RSS subscription button. I know many people don’t miss it, because they don’t know what’s it useful for, but since I found out, I miss it so much! And I bet you’ll miss me too!
Your anxiety to take some money out of my wallet (or credit card). “If you liked my article, buy me a beer”. And if I did not like your article? Are you going to buy me a beer instead? If you think you are strong, then make donations work double way: I like it, I buy it; I don’t like it, you buy it.
The missing possibility to subscribe to comments. You are gorgeous, I read you, I always feel like leaving comments on your blog, but I would like to see what you answered, without wandering through your 300 pages or so. Please don’t rely on my bookmarking skills. Or maybe you answer my comments just for the newcomers to see what a great host you are?
Your warm invitation for me, blogger-reader, or reader-blogger, to become part of your network. Why does this make me nervous? Actually it’s not this, but the missing “thank you for your application, we have rejected you request because…” makes me feel sorry for my time. Your network is great. So is your blog. Too bad that your PR sucks (and I don’t mean Page Rank here)!
This spot is for the readers: what else makes you nervous when reading a blog?

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Things to Avoid - My Dear Cat

Ronald Huereca — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:00:09 +0000

I love my cat. She’s black. She’s precious. And she just loves sitting in my lap as I’m writing blog posts. She purrs. She’s cute. And you could probably care less.

Do You Care About My Cat?

You don’t care about my cat? Why not? I think I feel a tear coming on. She is the most precious jewel to all mankind. She’s there when others aren’t. She nags when nobody is around to nag.

But let’s face it. You could probably care less about my cat. My cat is mine and mine alone. You probably have your own pets you cherish, or perhaps a child that you love dearly. But do I care about your pets and child? Unless I am directly involved in the life of either, I doubt it.

Good Cat Topics

Don’t get me wrong. There are some good cat topics out there. There are even blogs devoted to cats for cat lovers. But on a personal site, cat topics should be the exception rather than the rule.

If you do blog about cats on your personal site, here are some topics suggestions:

How to get a cat to shut up.
How to train a cat.
Your favorite cat recipe.
Describe in detail what happened when your cat licked the 9-volt battery.
Describe the time you came across your cat sleeping in the dryer.
Describe what happens when you throw a cat into a full bath tub.
Show a video of a cat chasing a laser around a room.

By the way, for the PETA folks out there, I’m not suggested being cruel to a cat. I’m suggesting that those topics might actually make a cat post entertaining.

Conclusion

I love my cat. She’s sleeping so peacefully right now on my window sill. And I have my spray bottle aimed right at her and she doesn’t yet know of the impending doom. Should I let her sleep?

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Things to Avoid Series

Bes — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:18:06 +0000

This week, from June 4th, Monday, until ~~June 10th, Saturday~~ June 8th, Friday, we at the RA Project are going to run a special series called “Things to Avoid.” With so many blogs and posts revolving around things you should do, we want to divert your focus for a while to things you should not do. Avoiding the things we tell you to avoid may help maintain better and stronger relationships with your readers.

Please join me, Ronald and Simonne as we show you different pitfalls that many bloggers, even the most famous ones, fall into because of stereotypes and misconceptions. Everyday, we will be reviewing one single aspect of the online world that you should avoid in order to appreciate your readers more.

Thank you. We wish you all the best!

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Trolls, Would You Leave My Blog Alone, Please?

Simonne — Tue, 29 May 2007 14:01:31 +0000

Did it ever happen that you had something so important to say, that you felt the urge to go comment about it on other blogs, even though they were not at all related to your issue, only to direct people’s attention towards yourself?

If you did, then welcome to the world of trolls! Maybe we all want a bit more attention from time to time, but this does not mean that we have to intrude in other people’s lives (or blogs) and become a real plague in our desire to capture some audience. There are other ways to get people to listen to you than behaving like a little, dirty troll.

Trolls can be existing members of a community that contribute no useful information to the topics, but instead make argumentative comments in an attempt to discredit another person. They concentrate almost exclusively on facts irrelevant to the point of the conversation, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others.

As mentioned in Wikipedia,

the contemporary use of the term first appeared on Usenet groups in the late 1980s. It is widely thought to be a truncation of the phrase trolling for suckers, itself derived from the sport fishing technique of trolling. The latter can be compared with trawling. Another plausible derivation is that it may be a shortening of “patrolling,” with the common meaning of “searching,” especially, “searching for those who do not wish to be found.”

What can bloggers do about this phenomenon which sometimes can become life threatening and result in somebody being afraid to step out of their own courtyard?

Let’s see some possible actions. If you have more ideas of keeping the trolls away, please feel free to leave a comment here. Thank you.

1. Ignore them

If you are the author or the reader of a blog post, ignore any trolls that may comment there. If you, as a reader, bait into their diversion, how would you expect your readers act in case this happens on your blog?

2. Give them a chance to take back their words

It is now possible by enabling editing comments. It is hard to believe, but some people may be sorry after they see their nasty comment published and they may wish to take it back. Why not give them this opportunity?

3. Use moderation for new comments

This can be a temporary measure to calm down the spirits. If your blog is under troll attack, then enabling moderation will put a delay between the moment of writing such a comment and the moment of seeing it published. Yet, under normal circumstances, when trolling activity on your blog is rather low or inexistent, there is no reason for applying this method.

4. Have a commenting policy on your blog

This will give you the “moral right” of deleting anything you may not consider suitable for being published there. Your blog is like your home: you give it the tone you desire, you shape and control it, you offer your readers food for thought and emphasize the values that define your writing.

5. Move on

There are several ways to get away: close comments on the attacked posts, keep on writing about your usual topics, rather than getting involved into the argument, or keep perspective.

What do you think? Were you ever under a troll attack? How did you solve the crisis?

As reader of another blog, did you encounter troll comments there? What was your reaction to them?

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Get Those Lurkers to Speak Up

Simonne — Tue, 22 May 2007 11:00:32 +0000

How did you get to read this article?

If you are new to this site and you care for your readers, then you have landed in the most appropriate place, because here “it’s all about the readers”.
If you are new here, but you don’t give a damn about your readers, again this is a good place to see the importance of fulfilling the promises you make to readers, or to find out how it feels to be lost in the conversation. If you are not so convinced readers matter, then please take a look to see what this Readers Appreciation Project is all about. And be aware that traffic consists of readers, adding up one at a time.
If you are a regular reader (thank you very much), then you know by now that this is the second article of the mini series Increasing Readership and Community, following up The Six Shapes And Colors Of Blog Readers.

Do you keep the dialogue alive?

Back on topic, let’s see if and how we can get the lurkers involve in the conversation and become loyal readers.

You can’t have them all. No matter how interesting and how intriguing your articles, if one is not interested in the topic, he/she won’t get caught in the conversation. They will always come and go, perhaps being misled to your site by a search engine ranking you earned for non-relevant keywords, or maybe following a link from another blog.
Let them know what it is about. If a visitor likes one of your articles and wants to know more, it is very probable that he/she will click on your About page, if there is one available, so make sure you make it clear (unless you decide to take it out and let the readers make an opinion from your content).
Make it interactive. Ask your readers for their opinions, organize contests and group writing projects. Take care though, with the contests: if your readership is very low (maybe less than 50 uniques per day) you may end up with no participants, unless you give really attractive prizes.
Be specific.
- Instruct your readers exactly how they can comment on your blog. Let me give you this example: I once asked several StumbleUpon friends to leave some comments on an article I had sent them. Out of 20-40 people, only one understood that he was supposed to comment on my blog (and even he did not know how to do it, until I explained that there is a special comment box under the article). All others gave me their brilliant thoughts in the StumbleUpon message bar, so they are lost forever.
- Let people know how they can find your blog again. Did it ever happen that you read some cool blog and when you wanted to visit it again after a while, you did not remember the name? Please take a look at this example: JohnTP has made it very clear how to subscribe to updates of his site. The subscribe box is above the fold, horizontally centered on page, and it contains the text “Enter your email”. If you still don’t get it, you can choose to click on “More info” and you’ll land on a more explicit page.
Make it flexible.
- Give your readers more options of reading your articles. Watch your visitors’ behavior all the time and adjust your layout and your content according to your observations. One good tool comes with Google Analytics and it is called Site Overlay. It gives you the number of clicks for all links on each page. Let’s say that you display a list of recent posts just above the post content. You may notice many readers click again on the post name on the list, instead of scrolling down a bit to read the real content. If that is the case, you should take the list away, no matter how useful you think it is. If it gets your readers nervous, it can’t be that useful.
- Adjust your speech. Some people say that there are no resistant listeners, but only inflexible speakers.
Write a series. Create expectations. However, don’t disregard first time visitors. Make sure that every post is an article in itself, don’t let people wonder where your story began. Link your older posts if necessary for a good understanding of the current article. Don’t leave the impression of a very exclusive club, because you’ll miss the chance of increasing your audience. Try to improve your copy-writing skills, and write copy that even grandma will love.
Be social. Open yourself an account with several social networking sites, and then try to spend at least 30 minutes a day in making friends and interacting in those communities. As many of your silent visitors may have their own blogs, it is worth spending some time on Technorati as well. Maki from DoshDosh did an interesting experiment regarding the traffic coming from Technorati. It seems that, besides the above considerations, Technorati-referred visitors are also good for enlarging your reader pool.
Use your MyBlogLog widget. Look who’s silently visiting your site. Then go visit their community, subscribe to it (if it makes sense for you), leave some comments there. Many chances are that those people come back to comment on your site.
Moderate your comments. Welcome first time commentors. Give them options to subscribe to comments. Did you ever try the sensation of wanting to follow a conversation you took part in, and not being able to remember how to find it again?
Are you an anti-social, shy bear? You can still have a lot of readers, but you’ll have to try harder with SEO and to write damn good stories to get and keep people on your site only from organic search. But you better turn your comments off, so people know from the very beginning that it’s not the dialogue you are after.
Measure your progress. Ask yourself these questions:
- Where am I now?
- Where do I want to be?
- How do I get there?
- Am I getting there?
This cycle should be continuous. Otherwise, we would be just leaves in the wind, wouldn’t we? So believes Seth Godin, who reminds us of a good and often misused measurement tool. How many of you have set goals in Google Analytics?

If you have some good examples to illustrate the above points, I’ll be happy to collect them into a useful resource for all of us. Do you know a blog that’s excellent at making people stick to it and participate? Or maybe you have such a blog. Please send us your success story. There are many chances that it will end up published here.

Thank you all. Please stay tuned until next Tuesday, when we are going to get a closer look at the trolls and defend the spirit of our communities.

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The Six Shapes and Colors of Blog Readers

Simonne — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:00:20 +0000

This is the first post of a mini series aiming to help you get more loyal readers and increase your community.

You are a blogger. Chances are you employ some statistics programs on your blog. So, you must know by now that there are people reading it. If it happens that you use FeedBurner (or something similar), you are aware that some of those people are loyal readers.

You may be satisfied with the knowledge you get from such programs. However, there is another kind of classification which could help you adjust your writing according to the category of readers you wish to target.

1. The Lurker

The lurker is the quiet reader of your blog. Interested in the topics you write about, he comes back often (maybe he bookmarked your site). He seeks and maybe follows your advice, but he seldom leaves a comment.

Possible lurker profiles:

Beginner bloggers, looking for tips on how to run a blog, overwhelmed by the huge quantity of information available, not perceiving yet that there is a dialog going on out there.
People from outside the blogosphere who find your site interesting and keep on coming back, but do not know they are allowed (and even encouraged) to leave comments.
Advanced bloggers (is this where the “A” may be coming from?), in search of interesting material for their blogs, busy and focused to get the latest news before others do.
Stumblers (a.k.a. StumbleUpon members), who press a button and abandon themselves to the odds that bring them food for their thoughts. Usually they don’t even stop by enough to read a full post (not to mention commenting). However, if something on your page attracts their interest, they would bookmark you, give you a thumb up or even write a review about your site.

2. The Troll

Trolls are attention seekers. Their mission is to derail the conversation and community you have built up on your blog and have everyone focus solely on them. You don’t write for the trolls. You don’t need them.

If you want, you can even participate in the Troll Eradication Project.

3. The Marketer

Marketers are the ones who have their own blogs or other online businesses, and who comment on other blogs as a promotion channel. As they don’t want to be perceived as spammers, they try to make pertinent and interesting comments, so other readers would click on their name. Marketers are valuable to you. Some of them may be your future partners or friends. Some others may offer you good feedback. If challenged, they can even fill your blog with spammy comments for the sake of an ephemeral $200 link, hoping that the almighty Google God will count it and reward their efforts.

4. The Spammer

No further explanation necessary. You don’t write for them, but they keep you busy. Ask Akismet.

5. The Seeker

Seekers are persons who found you via organic search. They can make an important part of your audience (depending on your SEO skills and on your blog’s age). They come and get their info, they might leave some comments, then they continue their online journey and you may never see them again. If your blog is very focused on his topic of interest, the seeker will bookmark it for further reference. As many of them may use del.icio.us to keep their bookmarks, they can be valuable to your blog. Del.icio.us bookmarks can bring you traffic and lots of links, if you manage to get to the front page. Another characteristic of seekers is that they would click a contextual ad to find out more about the researched topic. If you are after making money from your blog with contextual advertising, they are the ones who would put bread and butter (or maybe some caviar?) on your table.

6. The Loyal

This is the category that rewards you most. They like your writing, they gladly come back often to share their thoughts with you. They are your motivation for becoming better every day. They are your community.

Conclusion

Do you think your blog readers fall in other categories than the ones described above? Feel free to add them in the comments.

Aim of this exercise: try to keep your readers happy, and your blog healthier, by getting to know your audience better.

If you enjoyed this post, stay tuned in for next Tuesday’s topic: How to shift a reader from lurker to loyal. To keep up with the series, please subscribe.

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