There are only a couple of things needed, and really only one of them is essential, but the second is greatly appreciated. The first and most important being a notification mechanism to updated comments since the last comment. Meaning, if my comment to your post garners any responses, I want to know about it without having to spend time continually clicking back through your page. Not only would that waste my time, but it would artificially inflate your stats. Neither of us wants either of those things. So please take the time to add a plugin, or some other tool, that enables this capability. Else, don’t expect too many comenters to leave words on your posts.
The second, and maybe less important but still appreciated feature, is closing out the comments after so many days, be it 15 or 30, it doesn’t matter too much, but it definitely needs to be something reasonalbe. Receiving a notification a year or so more past the post date isn’t terribly relevant. Typically these trail off, so it’s not as big an issue, but the more posts to which you comment, the more likely you are to receive unnecessary notifications. At some point we need to stop talking about old topics. Thankfully Wordpress 2.7 was smart/kind enough to make this option standard, with a default setting of 14 days. Very handy.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I have always had the email on the bottom, but I kind of hate that feature. I am starting to like RSS comments. Then I can just add them to folder in Google Reader named comments, and follow them that way.
Keeps my inbox clean. have you ever posted on Chris Brogan’s blog? Holy Sh!@. I get like a couple hundred emails a day. I can’t do that anymore!
Still, checking your box below…
It does make a difference if you’re tracking replies on a blog that gets a hundred plus replies in a day. The emails are too much at that point.
I don’t think I’ve posted to Brogan’s blog, but I’ve been on some busy comment feeds. I may have to check into the RSS idea. But then do you take the comment feed from all blogs you subscribe to, or just blogs where you leave comments? How best to organize that in GR?
When I first started I wanted to try and comment a lot. That’s too much work, and actually better to just talk to the people I want to.
So, if I don’t have anything to say in a post, then I will not subscribe to the RSS (I have to add this on mine too, I forgot the last time I updated).
Then, I just have a folder named comments, and check that. Easy to remember the where you were. Once the conversation seems dead, I unsubscribe.
It’s the only way I can work. I read tech blogs, positive thinking blogs, financial bogs and a ton of others. So I have to put my head into one of these modes to actually say something worth saying.