What is it with sites that seem purposely designed to discourage readers from commenting? Have you noticed that more and more comments functions are set up to deliver your remarks to utterly irrelevant forums or to force you to identify yourself as a persona that’s not relevant to the community you’re cruising and that you don’t care to use for the purpose? And to ride my favorite hobby-horse again: are you aware of the extent to which these things invade your privacy?
Lookit this:
WordPress.com is especially egregious in this respect. Here, I wrote a comment on a favorite blog, hit post, and up came this. I am not logged in to WordPress right now, or at least, I don’t intend to be. But WP has decided I will identify myself as a WordPress blogger, whether I want to do so or not, and I will not identify myself as Funny about Money, which no longer is hosted there. The initial offer I get is to identify myself as the irrelevant “pvcccourseseng102,” a moniker that will make no sense to the blogger and that is utterly irrelevant to the PF community to which the blogger is holding forth. Nor will it pass any sort of recognition along to my blog.
But if I prefer, instead of surfacing as a WordPress.com blogger, I could post my comment to Twitter or Facebook.
Well, in the first place, I’m not talking to freaking EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WHO SUBSCRIBES TO FREAKING TWITTER, dammit. I’m addressing one blogger and maybe three readers who have commented on her site. And I’m not even faintly interested in commenting to everyone in the world. So the answer there is “No, thanks.”
Nor am I interested in posting my comment to Facebook, where it will be read by various friends and “friends” who have little knowledge and less interest about the blog in question. Why would I want to post an irrelevant message to my Facebook account?
And in the second place, why on earth would I or anyone want WordPress to “read Tweets from my timeline” (WhateverTF that is), see who I follow, see when I follow some new FaM admirer, update my profile for me? The answer to that one is NO, but hold the polite “thanks.”
Moving on, we arrive at Blogger.
OpenID is another service that forces you to sign up before you can comment. It has been shown to make users vulnerable to various kinds of malicious attacks. Even if it were safe as pablum, as with “loyalty cards,” I have “signed up” with quite enough acquisitive and inquisitive websites and merchandising scams, thank you, and I’m not signing up for another one. Nor am I signing up for LiveJournal (the pencil), Typepad (the cloud), or…or the American Institute of Mathematics (???? which is what “AIM” signifies to me). Here, too, Blogger thinks I’m pvcccourseseng102, a meaningless identity I have no intention of using on anyone’s blog or any other website. Other than my freshman comp website, of course.
Blocked from two of my favorite websites, let’s visit The Huffington Post:
Here you’re given the option of signing in to Facebook, Twitter, or AOL. The “more” options include Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, or Hotmail. Again…why would I want a random comment I make on some random news site to be linked with and presumably displayed to readers on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Select Google and you’re told that Huffington wants to access your real-world name, your country, your language, and all your Google contacts!
And once again, the answer is NO / replace “Thanks” with an unprintable expletive.
Then there’s Disqus. The makers of this thing, available for WordPress as a plug-in, apparently are trying to make it ubiquitous, and they’re not doing a bad job of that. It tracks every comment you make, anywhere and at any time, under the persona that you first registered with. Nevermind that you might want to post as Melete of Adjunctorium at one site and as Funny of Funny about Money at another: you are who you aren’t. Nevermind whether you’re logged in or not: this little gem tracks you as you wander from site to site. It knows your IP address, the version of your Web browser, what page you came from before you landed on one of its sites, and where you go when you leave.
The information Disqus collects, which has been shown to be “de-anonymizable,” is shared with third parties. And with lots of other folks: Disqus publishes your entire commenting history, along with a list of blogs and services you frequent, on a publicly viewable profile page. Not only that, but you can be banned from commenting on your favorite Disqus-powered site for no reason whatsoever, as has happened to me with The Atlantic. As it develops, publishers can ban entire blocks of IP addresses, and if yours happens to be in that block, tough nougies—we don’t need no steenking First Amendment!
I understand that WordPress would like readers not to publish naughty and mean-minded comments on the sites of its mostly newbie bloggers, some of whom may be children or teenagers. But Akismet, which comes with all WordPress.com sites, does a fine job of blocking spam, and most WP webmasters can figure out how to block unwanted commenters. It’s really very easy.
As for the others, obviously they’re intent on gathering personal information. I’m just as intent on not sharing it with them.
These annoying devices bring a dead stop to commenting on blogs and news sites, as far as I’m concerned. And I think that’s too bad. It’s kind of fun to jump into the commenting fray at a news site.
But the whole point of blogging is to invite comments…that’s what blogs are for! The comment-killing gimmicks just stymie me. I can not understand why anyone would deliberately want to discourage readers from commenting on a blogsite. If you want reader comment, choose a host that doesn’t try to extort information from your readers. Or configure your comments function so readers can choose to identify themselves as their online personae. If you don’t want reader comment, then for heaven’s sake, save bandwith and use a spiral notebook to write your journal.
Grrr! Am I the only person in the world who hates these things and refuses to leave comments on sites that use them?
Ooh–is that a comment on my Coach bag post??? Thanks for the comment, Funny. I’ve been too exhausted from the new semester to leave many comments for you, but I’ve been reading your adventures with interest–as always.
Yesh. Beloved Coach bags! Beloved Frugal Scholar Blog!!
Ohhh, the first of the semester is such torture, isn’t it? Just think of it…just a few editing assignments a year and one of us will never have to do that again…. 😀
Nail on head. *Sigh* I drew an arbitrary line. I don’t comment on anything that requires facebook or twitter logins. I don’t let Apps touch my facebook profitle which is very locked down. Maybe I have to read more about Disqus after your comments? A hard to read captcha will make me close the window immediately.
I needed wedding gift inspiration once and was told to check out the person’s Pinterest. To look at their wedding “pin board” on Pinterest, I had to sign up. To sign up, I HAD to use my Facebook or Twitter login. Long story short, for this one attempt at a gift inspiration I ended up “following” all of my facebook friends on Pinterest. No idea how it happened. Every once in a while I get an email that they’re following me back and they have no idea how it happened. I’ve still never pinned anything on Pinterest and have never gone on it again after that day.
This makes us sound like idiots, but we’re not. The systems are just set up to drag you in and suck all your data before your realize it.
@ Mrs PoP: Yup! IMHO, it’s deceptive and very invasive.
YES, YES AND YESSSSS.
I’ve semi sworn off Blogger blogs – first it refused to play nice with WordPress credentials and then the captcha got crazy impossible to read, which was reinforced this week when I felt compelled to comment on two Blogspot posts.
WP.com – sorry, I’m guilty. I still can’t quite reconcile the time and money going self hosted entails, but hopefully eventually. (Logging in via Twitter doesn’t automatically post the fact that you commented to Twitter, does it?)
As for Disqus, the new version sucks and is as bad as WP.com. FB, Twitter and G+ logins, and if you comment as a guest there’s only space for name and email, and no space for your blog URL. Lameness.
Native WP self hosted comments (like on your site) and Commentluv are still my faves.
Agreed! I hate Disqus! And those blogs that keep insisting on only giving us the options of OpenID, Disqus, the Twitter thing, the other thing you have to register for, sigh.
I think I commented over at LC’s blog that I had no idea that blogger blogs were so crap about comments until I transitioned! And I haven’t done anything about upgrading my commenting platform yet but I’m rather unmotivated to, what I have now seems to work well enough for now and I think people are able to comment … right? I guess relying on people to complain didn’t really work well for me when I was on Blogger though.
It’s easy to comment at the new site. The old site was OK, too, because it did at least provide the option of signing in as Funny about Money. Blogger users must have to configure the comments function to do that, because some sites don’t allow you to sign in as you please.
I’ve about had it with plugins that ask you to do the extra step, especially the annoying “do you wish to subscribe to comments”. My inbox is cluttered enough as it is.
And the ones that subscribe you willy-nilly! Where you have to notice that the default is “subscribe to comments” and you have to uncheck the box to avoid being e-mailed comments to comments to comments.
I do occasionally go back to a blogger’s post to see what new comments have gone up and (ego trip!) whether anyone has responded to my own gilded words. But given the amount of stuff that pours into my in-box, having it e-mailed to me is not very practical.
WordPress started some nonsense that was overly restrictive to commentors a few months ago. I turned off the requirement for people to ID themselves when they comment on my blog and that seemed to help. I don’t get a lot of comments, so it’s not hard to monitor them. And, as you point out Aksimet does great keeping out spam.
Signing in with Facebook or Twitter doesn’t automatically send your comment there, but it does connect your accounts to that blog. When I’m really desperate to get to something that way I’ll sign in with Facebook and then go to Facebook ASAP and delete that item as an app.
Agree that it is SUPER annoying, though. As Mrs POP says, they just want to suck your data. 🙁
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just ONE ultracool thing in our lives could be left unmonetized and free of greed?
Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year, Happy Easter Egg, Happy Mother’s Day, Happy Father’s Day, Happy Grandparents’ Day, Happy Secretary’s Day, and Happy Fourth of July to you all!
Oh, and please buy 10 of whatever is advertised on my website today.
I hate it! I try to comment a lot and it is so annoying sometimes. I never remember the passwords so I always have to do the forget password option also. I won’t do blogger b/c my gmail is not associated with my blog! LifeFyre is another example.
Notwithstanding I LOVE the subscribe to comments plug in – it allows the convo to go on. If I didn’t check the box how would I know that you made a comment back.
Yeah, assuming it defaults to let you proactively choose to comment. Some of them default to subscribe you, and if you don’t notice before you hit “post comment,” you end up with still MORE clutter in an already jam-packed inbox. Then you have to go to the trouble of unsubscribing, which makes you worry that if the blogger in question is watching the unsubscribes, it may hurt his or her feelings. Which you’d rather not do.
I’m with you. I hate Disqus and I’ve even gone so far as to remove other blogs from my blogroll if they use it. One big thing I’ve seen is that it takes away the ability to put a URL, so in other words if I leave a comment, someone likes it, they no longer have a way to click to me to get to my website and see if there’s anything else I might like.
Yup. And of course for probloggers, that’s one of the reasons we comment on other people’s sites.
It undermines both the social culture and the business model of blogging.
I’m right there with you. Hate Discus, resent having to log into wordpress.com (I have an account there solely to be able to comment on wordpress.com blogs that require it), dislike using my Google email (since I’m rarely logged in primarily as Mrs. Accountability) and I also don’t like logging into Facebook or Twitter to comment.
Only one difference… Akismet stopped working for me – it decided that EVERYONE was spam, INCLUDING moi, blog owner, while logged in and commenting through the dashboard! I am using Comment Luv and commenters have to check a box to “prove they aren’t a spambot” I worry about offending but I could not keep up with the mess of spam that was hitting me without Akismet’s help. I also am using a plugin called Spamfree WordPress. I am still getting about 50 spams a week even with both these in place and I’ve tried blacklisting them by IP number and keywords to no avail.
@ Mrs. Accountability:
There must be a bug in Akismet as installed at OODA. If you’d like, I’ll share my web guru’s name w/ you — drop me a line. His prices are extremely reasonable.
I’ve also used Spamfree WordPress, but it misses a great deal more nuisances than Akismet does. Occasionally Akismet somehow goes berserk and causes BlueHost to throttle FaM. When that happens, I have to deactivate Akismet for awhile. Eventually I can reactivate and it’s OK again for some months.
Don’t mind things like Comment Luv, which isn’t onerous. But the Captcha that Blogger has started using is almost impossible — the letters & numbers are illegible and I usually end up having to try to guess at them two or three times before it will let a comment post.
No point in trying to blacklist spammers…most of them are spoofing IP addresses, so it’s not going to do any good.