How do you treat comments on your post? Do you leave by the default setting, which stops links to your commentators or breaking the walls and grant them a flow of link love. When I first heard about this movement (I don’t know when it started, but it’s been discussed since February 2007), I took a while to consider giving some of my popularity 
to others. Finally, I decided that do-following author’s comment links is a good idea to payback their effort.
There are always obstacles in committing good deeds. Bloggers who implemented do-follow attribute on their comment section grew tired of spams and decided to alter their appreciation to commentators in various ways.
I’m not debating their reasons, most of what they say are true. Generosity invites people coming. Do-following links give some people shallow reason to comment. Then they put their name leaving short messages like “I like it!”, “Awesome”, “I agree”, (or worse, anchor texts) with purpose is only to get backlinks to whatever URL they put.
So, how do I deal with such issue? Recognizing that the one of the solutions is to prevent blog bouncers visiting our blog just to drop comments, I need to set a minimum number of comments written before the author is eligible to have his/her links followed. I didn’t choose to alter to Top Commentators plugin because I think it’ll also cause people to send comments flood in order to have their name/anchor text displayed all over the blog (if it’s displayed on the sidebar, for example).
Using the same plugin, I can also choose to limit the dofollow link only to author’s name field. This way, links on comment text field won’t be followed. They can put whatever links they’re up to, my link juice isn’t leaking 
! And since the comment text field is no longer interesting for robots, whatever is inside will take effect only to the eye of human readers. If comment authors realize this, they are encouraged to comment accordingly instead of just 2-3 words.
Maybe the plugin I am using could help you revive your support to “no nofollow” society. But if it couldn’t, I’m sure that your endeavor to appreciate blog readers will keep moving on!
“Give, and it will come back to you”. I’m not sure she said it, but I bet she’d agree .
Technorati Tags: do-follow,no-follow,blog comment text
I thought about using your plugin, to allow those people dofollow who have “x” number of comments. I chose top commentators in the end because instead of requiring 10 comments for 10 links, the people that comment 10 times get 118 links (sitewide) on my blog. The top 10% get rewarded 10x more than everyone else.
I suppose it is a personal opinion, but as long as you have at least one of our two plugins I believe the readers benefit in the end.
I got your point. But I wonder does using top commentators help reduce spam comments?
I guess having nofollow removed is still a good way to boost the comment count of blog posts as well as promoting interaction within your blog.
Thanks for the link.
Your welcome, Wayne!
Gifts are always a good way..
I just plunged in, giving do-follow, commentluv and topcommentators linklove to anybody who comments. I do have askishmet in place though, and delete the rest of comment spammers manually…
good post, I stumbled you for it
A strong combo for comments! Thanks for the stumble, Mirjam!
Nice, I use this very same plugin on my blog. I also enabled the Top Commenters widget that helps give even more recognition to people who comment a lot.
Luke’s last blog post..Three nice plugins to have
DoFollow or No nofollow should be a reward for our commenter’s, even if we will take more spam. With some moderation and some captcha plugins we can solve the SPAM problem.
Regards
DoFollows last blog post..The Ramblings of Some Audio Guy
I’ve been using Akismet and so far it works great!
You can also delete comments such as “Good post” and similar. Although I don’t like WP, some old websites of mine are powered by WP (not important sites at all). Anyway, the point is that I always delete short comments in which it’s clear that they’re spam (although manual).
I have no problems linking to sites that I wouldn’t normally link to… If comments are somehow useful, then they (commentators) deserve a link. Naturally, a nonofollow link
.
Jan the fish´s last blog post..Poecilia reticulata
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