The Reader Appreciation Project

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 Read more…

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

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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.

1. 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.”
2. 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.
3. Leave a comment saying, “I disagree” without explaining yourself.
4. Make a “U Suck” badge and announce daily winners.
5. Start yet another “Make Money Online” blog.
6. Link to someone and then demand you return the favor or else you’ll take the link off and unsubscribe from their feed.
7. Start another “blog awareness day” and this time make it have to deal with cats.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.

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.

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.

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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. Read more…

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?

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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. Read more…

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?

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.