#FAIL
If you have a blog don’t moderate your comments – that is what spam filters are for. The blogs in question? One belongs to a Microsoft team, and the other, an Agile company. The first I expected, the latter I did not.
I suggest adding Disqus comments to your blog. Great stuff.
Full Transcript
Hey, everybody. Robert Dempsey here, CEO and founder of Atlantic Dominion Solutions.
So, I have a little bone to pick with some folks out there on the Internet. I was commenting on numerous sites yesterday, sites having to do with Agile software development, customer collaboration and transparency. And what I found was, of about, I’d say there were maybe, let’s say twenty to twenty-five sites that I commented on, and about five of these sites had comment moderation in place.
And so, I’m wondering why a blog that is talking about Agile, which, at the heart of Agile is collaboration and part of collaboration is transparency, why, if folks are talking about transparency and talking about collaboration, they have comment moderation turned on. I mean, to me that seems somewhat hypocritical because we have many tools that can help us with this.
So, we use Word Press for our blog, where you might be viewing this, and on there–last night I installed DISQUS, D-I-S-Q-U-S, I believe. I’ll put a link to it here. But either way, I installed that as our commenting systems. But even before that, with WordPress, there’s a plug-in called Akismet that helps prevent spam.  And if you’re regularly looking at what it is people are writing on your blog in responding, which actually a number of these folks on these Agile blogs do, then I don’t see a very valid reason, especially if you’re talking about collaboration and transparency, why you’re going to moderate the comments on your site.
I mean, frankly, for us, we’ve had customers, even with our products, that aren’t happy with things or they have problems, and you know, I want to know the bad news even faster than I know the good news. So that we can respond to these things, we can improve what it is we’re doing and improve the way that we’re operating to make sure that this stuff doesn’t happen again.
And for us on our blog, if people disagree with me, then I definitely want those voices on our blog in the comments so that it can even help me maybe reform an opinion that I have, because they bring insight to a subject that I might not, myself, have, especially if I’m really close to a subject, something I’m doing all the time, doing everyday, such as Agile development.
So, let me know what you think of comment moderation, if you have it turned on, why you have it turned on, what you’re justification for that is and I look forward to reading those comments and having those conversations with you.
Later!
Other Posts That Might Interest You
