Stop Abusing My Blog - Make Me Want To Trust You
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Today is the “Blogging Against Abuse” day. The idea is to post something related to “abuse“, any type of abuse. This may sound a little vague, but on the other hand, that means whatever the type of blog you run, no matter what niche, you can participate and still stay on topic. :)
The “Stop The Abuse” idea came from the cool folks at BlogCatalog, and of course I had to join in, especially cause I think it’s a great idea, but I also have some things I want to share.
You meet a lot of nice people online, especially when you run a blog, but unfortunately you also meet the not-so-cool-so-make-sure-you-dont-trust type.
Here are 5 things that could fall in the “abusing my blog/trust” category I think.
- Blog Spam
- Fake Comments
- Trolls
- Stolen Content
- E-mail Conversations
Some can be really infuriating, but there are ways to make sure you don’t suffer from the “I want revenge” syndrome.
Blog Spam And Fake Comments
There are many things you can do to avoid that, here are some suggestions:
- Install Akismet if you run WordPress
- Another good spam filter is Bad Behavior
- Monitor all comments, and flag obvious spam
- Turn on registration (not recommended)
- Turn off commenting (also not recommended if you want conversations)
- Always visit the blog/site of the commenter - especially if you see too many new names pop-up in a short period.
- When in doubt, remove the URL from the comment and publish it anyway
- Disable DoFollow (no worries, DoFollow is still enabled on SWR)
- Check older comments for links now leading to “questionable” sites
- If someone leave 10 comments in 5 minutes, hit delete
What else can you do to prevent blog spam, and fake comments? Spammers are abusing your blog, it’s your bandwidth, your time (it can be quite time-consuming deleting spam comments).
Getting rid of spam is quite easy, but as for fake comments, it’s a little more difficult. How do you manage this?
I Love Trolls! They’re Fun!
Trolls are basically, well let’s see what Wikipedia thinks:
[…] An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who intentionally posts controversial or contrary messages in an online community such as an online discussion forum, especially GameFAQs, or USENET, with the intention of baiting users into an argumentative response. Wikipedia […]
Well, it’s quite simple, make fun of them. Easy, and fun. And when you’re tired, just delete the comments, and ban the IP address. Voila. ;)
Oh, if you run WordPress, you could also install the douchebag plugin the folks at YoungGoGetter released not so long ago.
Content Theft
If you haven’t found one of your posts republished on another blog yet, don’t worry it’ll happen eventually. And will probably happen again, and again, many times.
Strangely enough, since I wrote my post Content Theft - How I Recently Had To Deal With That, a lot of my posts were copied without my consent. Maybe because I wrote about the issue, and it ended up being my most popular post. ;)
E-mail Conversations Are Not Private (anymore)
It’s true, whatever you write in an e-mail can be published online, anywhere. Of course if that happens, the first thing you can do is contact the person, and ask him/her to remove it from his/her blog. In most cases the person will be really sorry and go ahead and remove it. All good!
But… there’s this type of person that won’t remove it. Claiming they have the right to publish it, because of fair use and blah, blah, blah… I know this can be infuriating, but unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about it.
You can go and rant about it, but honestly, what can you do except removing that person from your contact list and never e-mail that person ever again? Adding a disclaimer in every e-mail I send doesn’t sound good to me.
But, would you recommend this person? Nope! Never. Do not do business with, or recommend that person to anyone. Simple. It won’t make a huge difference, you have to get over it, but that’s the least you can do.
Your Turn To Talk
How do you deal with people abusing your trust online? Do you suffer from that “I want revenge” syndrome? humm.. Is there a cure?
;)
To participate in the “Blogging Against Abuse” challenge, visit BlogCatalog
And, I also recommend checking out Petlvr, got many posts about the challenge! :)
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18 Responses to “Stop Abusing My Blog - Make Me Want To Trust You”
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A very different and interesting take on abuse, I must say :)
I wrote about child abuse in light of two very brutal killings of children in Malaysia recently. Also included some statistics on child abuse, and what we can do to prevent child abuse.
That was a great read Jon. I havent yet suffered from the ” I want revenge syndrome” yet and hope not to. Anyway I totally against fake comments. I read a lot of blogs and everytime there is something interesting I leave a comment, whether to voice my opinion or just to let the blogger know that it was a good article.
Anyways, it was good to read your article and above all thatnx for all the tip that you wrote, it sure is helpful for a new blogger like me trying to make a name in the Blogosphere
I think my take on blog abuse is pretty much the same as the points you mentioned, my solution to it is though to turn on moderation on first comment. So far this has helped me all the way, perhaps a bit of a downside that first commenters don’t instantly have their comment published but it usually doesn’t take longer than a day with me.
Hi pelf, hehe yeah a little different heh? :) I’m off to read your post, thanks for participating in the challenge.
Hey Ritu, thanks a lot, I’m happy you found it helpful (it always feels good to read)
Slevi, totally, in fact on SWR the first comment if moderated, and when there’s more than 1 link it’s also held for moderation, but I usually approve them soon after.
Trust is a very important part of networking, perhaps that is why you are so successful, because people trust you…and as such, you do leave your self open…
I just made a commenting guidelines page, and it seems to have helped with the spam comments.
Good post Jon, I need to do one today on Pixelhead. I already did two others, one for which I can get credit.
lol … Jon, the douchebag plugin made my day! That’s hilarious.
I always check the site of a new commenter before I publish it. Most people that leave comment spam are really stupid about it - either with the comment or the site they’re trying to get a link to.
I’ve had a couple minor troll incidents. IF I even publish their comment, I just deal with them like what they’re saying makes complete sense. They love that ;)
I think my blog is too new so far. I’m just waiting for when it starts happening. This fricking spambots are brutal and once they get into your blog or site it’s relentless.
Though my means of dealing with those who violate my trust is pretty well covered on my site, I think the important thing is to still trust and not treat your visitors as if they were criminals.
At least that is my experience.
Hi Adam, thanks sooooo much, that really feels good to hear (read) ;)
Hey Shane, yeah I had a laugh when I saw that on YGG, I haven’t used it yet, you guyz are all too cool hehe. Hey that’s a good way to deal with trolls lol
Mike, yep, they’re something, the hardest part is trying to differentiate real comments spam ones, some spammers are clever.
Hi Jonathan, I think you got a really good point there, you still have to trust, 99% of people are real cool anyway :)
Hi there!
Please forgive the intrusion. I’m a complete newbie to the blog world and I stumbled across your post looking for tips on how to set up my blog and deal with the spam that we all know will be coming. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve bookmarked this post, as I think it is incredibly helpful to those of us just starting out!
I know the askmit feature on wordpress has saved me countless hours of spam deletion… my favorite fake commentes are the generic…
“Wow I really like you blog. Interesting perspective. Tell me what you think of mine at www.xxxxxxxx.xxxxxx”
Fake comments haven’t become a big problem on my site, but I’ll keep the YGG plugin in mind if it gets out of control
Another annoying kind…the ones that seem to have scraped content. You know, the comments that are a mash of unrelated words and then a link, like:
“watches sunny day anamorphism i talk yester dog [URL here]”
Blah.
You’ve addressed some important blog abuse issues, but I also want to point out the other side: blog admin nazis. Let’s face it — a lot of people comment on blogs for the backlink; and my understanding of the “Do Follow” concept was that people who take the time to write a thoughtful post on a dofollow blog have earned the right to a link. Naturally, I’ve been surprised to visit some blogs that proudly display the “U Comment, I Follow” logo, and when I take the time to write out a thoughtful, on-target post, they remove my link, but keep my post. To me that is the ultimate insult. I’d rather them delete the post entirely then to keep my contribution, but deny me a link.
I’d did the same on my blog, is a great cause and blogging is a good way to spread it.
Great job supporting a cause.
Hi Jon,
I agree about stop the abuse things. We all need to do that. spam is a big and trouble thing on the net. what can we say. when something related to money we all act in certain way. we might not be a spammer when we have things but just remember back then when we have nothing were we not a spammer too.
sometime people don’t really understand what is a spam comment. internet is a overflow of information and most of them are contradicting to each other. some say this some say that just like in the area of seo. so explain to me whether putting my name like up there with comment like this would you call a spam comment?
Nice read.
It is too late, but I also wanted to post an article on mt blog about blog abuse.
I don’t think that you should go back to nofollow. After all you can always differentiate relevant comments from irrelevant ones. Do you think that somebody who just wants a link back to his site would spend so much time reading articles and making up smart comments? Hardly so. He will just write whatever and most probably it won’t be even connected with the topic.
I thank the do follow blogs for help others get decent links. I do take advantage of it, but I don’t abuse. I comment only if the post really interests me (like this one). Besides I believe there should be a variety of means to use in order to build links. Still, yours is a great blog and everyone seems to really appreciate it. Congrats!