Comments and Trackback Policy

by TDavid @ 7:01 am PST

The current pulse of this blog (activity)

For the first three years this blog was in existence, we got by without a formal commenting policy. These days¹ we get over 500 comments submitted a day, the majority of which unfortunately are off-topic, spam and/or link to sites like these, and it has become necessary to create a formal policy for how comments and trackbacks are handled at this website. Unlike many sites we do not use rel=”nofollow” (see 11/25/2008 update below for details as we do add rel=nofollow in some cases) on links left in comments, so most of these rules place additional scrutiny on what you link to within comments. Not trying to tell you what to do on your site, just trying to tell you what not to do on ours.

We would like you to leave one or more comments or trackback pings to this blog as long as you follow the guidelines below.

NOTE: We reserve full editorial control over any comment submitted to this website including editing or deleting any comment in whole or part. These are the basic criteria used and should not be considered an all inclusive list. The list is subject to edit or change at any time by our discretion and of course we reserve the right to break our own rules:

1. No offtopic comments. Keep comment related to post. With literally thousands of posts you should be able to find something on topic to comment on here.
2. Use a nickname that at least looks like a name, no keyword(s) and stick to this name. Keyword names look spammy, even if they aren’t, so don’t do it here please. A name gives us somebody to talk to, a site name isn’t a person. We want to have a conversation, not speak at a place or thing.
3. Signature links must not lead to splog/spam, ad saturated pages or those which resemble these types of pages.
4. Some HTML is allowed including related/supporting links but if linking to your own sites a two-way trackback is preferred. If a link in the body of your comment doesn’t substantially add to the topic, it will be moved to replace your signature link or removed altogether.
5. Do not leave comments that say: “please read my comment on this at [insert external link]” or some not so clever variation. The comments section is there to make your point, not blatantly send readers elsewhere. You have a signature link where readers interested in your comment can follow.
6. Your very first comment is moderated, so it will take a bit longer to show up on the site. Please be patient because this applies to everyone, including our friends and family.
7. If you leave links in the body of a post, even if it’s not your first post, it may also be held in moderation and will be checked by a moderator to make sure it complies with the other rules. Please be patient for these comments to be moderated.
8. Do not use ALL CAPS or any other type of reader distraction like repeating exclamation points or other characters to stand out with your comment.

Trackback/Pingback Rules
1. No one-way trackbacks please. A one-way trackback is submitting a ping/trackback to a Hmm post (our site) with no linkback to the post at the trackback URL location (your site).
2. Duplicate/multiple ping/trackbacks for the same post from the same page are not allowed.
3. Trackbacks from splogs (spam blogs), heavily ad saturated pages/sites, automated sites/programs and link dumps like del.icio.us are not allowed/accepted.

Thank you for your interest in leaving a comment and please if the guidelines above agree with you, leave your related thoughts on any of the 5,000+ posts open for comment.

Update 11/25/2008 9:50am PST Due to an increase in low quality comments with links from obvious SEO gaming comments primarily being made on older posts, we are now using nofollow on unregistered commenters with less than **7** comments and registered users with less than **4** comments. Approved trackbacks still do not have rel=nofollow added to them. This doesn’t mean because you have made enough comments you can leave spammy links or violate any of the other guidelines mentioned above. Please don’t, these comments will be removed. Note: having performance problems with the third party plugin being used, so am working on a first party plugin that will scale for this site.

9/9/07 8:58am PST: some additional clarification on #2 using site names for comments. Removed the leave a comment paragraph because no comments are allowed on this page. Added sentence to #4 about link in the body of comment needing to significantly add to the topic in order to remain. Added to #7 the sentence about all other comment rules applying to links in the body of posts.

12/14/2006 7:12am PST: I removed the prior picture version of the comment rules (not accessible for sight impaired) and added the text version below. The main addition commenters will note is that verbiage was added to include “ad saturated websites.” If the content to ad and other sidebar garbage on a page is too much, links won’t be accepted. This is a direct response to a flood of crap comments being left with signature links leading to pages with too many ads.

11/25/08 4:41pm PST: see this 2008 post analyzing Hmm commenting activity by year [↩]

Related Posts