I am writing this because I think many of my blogging friends may be wondering why I don't comment on their blogs often. The reason is that you may have it made too difficult for me!!!
I know you don't mean to, so that's why I decided to write this post and let you know why you don't hear from me like you used to.
Over a year ago I stopped commenting on most blogs. Here's my number one reason why.
They have CAPTCHA enabled to "challenge" me. And boy it does challenge me. TOO MUCH.
I have come to despise CAPTCHA, you know those letters and numbers you have to type just to leave your note? If a blogger makes me type those challenge letters, I figure they must not really care about getting comments. Here's what happens to me.
I read a lovely post that touches my heart and I want to comment. So even though I have vision and typing issues I type it up. Then they hit me with "the Challenge" I sigh and then try...but I usually get it wrong 4 or 5 times - its incredibly frustrating. Not only was it time consuming for me to write the comment, I have to go through this. Then even worse, at least half the time I lose the comment I wrote because for some reason the window shuts down. So I stopped commenting.
NEW RULE: I don't leave comments if people make it hard for me to do so.
I know. Everyone whines, "but what about Spammers?" Well, what about them?
Do you really get that many? I don't. Maybe once a month and I get a lot of traffic to this blog. I have about 3000 readers.
And how hard is it to delete spam anyway? I can delete them in one click. So why make my loyal readers suffer?
I only tell you this in case you want to reconsider using the challenge feature on your blog.
As an alternative to help with Spamming, TypePad lets you turn off commenting after a certain amount of time. I turn it off after 3 months. So SPAM is even more greatly reduced.
I hardly ever get spam, though...so I decided to make it easier for my loyal readers and not challenge them. And by the way, my rate of comments did go up when I did that. I try to make it as easy as possible.
So how about it? Can we start a campaign to "STOP THE CAPTCHA!"? : )
If you turn off CAPTCHA let me know below and I'll start following and commenting on your blog again! : )
If you choose to keep it on...feel free to let me know why, but I also reserve the right to not comment. I've said my piece on it. It really is that hard for me. : )
Another way to Attract Comments - Allow Linking
Another way to attract commenting to your blog is to allow people to link to blog posts they have written on similar topics! I want you to comment and leave relevant links to your posts. If I had time to search them all down, I would link to them myself. But I don't, so I leave it up to you to share your links.
However, if someone abuses this priveledge with irrelevant links. I will and do delete them.
It's that simple.
I sincerely hope my frustration is not taken the wrong way. I truly want to just let you know what's happening and give you an opportunity to reconsider your policy. Cuz I love your blogs! And if I'm feeling this way...I bet lots of other people are too.
All my best,
Ariane : )
