Saturday, February 16, 2013

A heads-up about comments

I’ve noticed lately that many readers are leaving two or three versions of a comment. The second and third tries don’t seem to be matters of rethinking things: rather, they suggest that the commenter is uncertain about whether a comment has gone through, or stuck, or whatever the appropriate metaphor might be.

I moderate comments to keep spam and other kinds of unpleasantness from appearing on my blog, which means that comments don’t appear immediately. Not long ago, I added a paragraph to my minimalist comment policy (you see it when you click on a link for comments):

Notice the (easy-to-miss) text that appears at the top of the page after you leave a comment: “Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.” Comments don’t disappear; there’s no need to repost them.
I suppose that this paragraph, like Blogger’s message, is also easily missed.

Reader, keep the comments coming, please. But you can save yourself some tedium if you remember: once is enough.

comments: 4

plntxt said...

That's ridiculous! I've never double-posted!

plntxt said...

That's ridiculous! I've never double-posted!

Linda said...

Hi Michael,

I just came across your blog today and saw this post...and had to comment. I couldn't help but laugh at the double post. I also moderate comments as well, but I don't like the thing where you have to type in the text that the caption shows you, as it is often unreadable. Hope your comments are useful and kind. Have a great week.

Michael Leddy said...

Not long ago I encountered a Blogger CAPTCHA whose type-the-number half showed nothing to type — that was a new level of unreadability.

Thanks for reading, Linda.