Suggestion for acknowledging comments – even the unapproved ones
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I’ve made a number of comments on other people’s blogs. Some of these comments never appear. I get the message ‘waiting for moderation’ but then later they just disappear without any public or private feedback whatsover.. I believe these comments were fair, factual, short and courteous so I assume they were not approved simply because they disagreed with the blogger’s opinion. Now I understand that its the blogger’s prerogative to reject comments on his own blog, but isn’t it reasonable that a brief automated message on all blogs should at least acknowledge that a comment was received and rejected. For example: ‘Beau’s comment received Sept 1 not accepted’. This would at least indicate to the commentor that the comment was moderated, and it would also indicate to other readers the amount of traffic the blog is receiving. At the moment I’m just arriving at the conclusion that unless I’m sending a comment praising the blogger then I’m wasting my time writing a comment.
Regards
Beau -
If some of your comments ARE being posted, then you’re not getting caught by Akismet and labeled spam, so that means that, yes, your comments which have vanished have not been approved. The potential for drama under the scenario you propose is virtually unlimited, and while it’s a logical suggestion assuming every blogger is dispassionate, I think it’s impractical. If it were on my blog, I’d disable it, even though I virtually never delete comments.
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Raincoaster. I don’t really foresee any more drama than there is at present. Comments get rejected, thats pretty dramatic for the commenter. The blogger would still have total control. He wouldn’t need to be involved in any wars. he would just hit ‘not approved’ as usual. An alternative could be a rejection notice that doesn’t name the commenter but simply provides a running total to the readers on comments approved and rejected.
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Among other things, I do consult on internet drama and really see a lot of potential for abuse and drama here. Like I said, if everyone’s dispassionate, it’s not a big deal, but as we all know, not everyone is consistently rational.
As well, quite a few trolls would be attracted, as they like to look like martyrs, and would hammer the websites using that feature mercilessly, claiming on their own sites “I had the most perfect, logical, sourced comment and he killed it!” a simple variation of “the lurkers are with me.”
As it is, as you say getting rejected is pretty dramatic for the commenter; in my experience, that is probably one out of three hundred readers. So multiply the drama by three hundred, plus the troll-magnet factor, plus the drama of the Deus Ex Machina blogger being exposed as a comment-hiding Wizard of Oz figure, and add weekend drunkblogging to the mix…
But it’s not up to me. Maybe if someone writes that as a plugin for WP.org, WP.com will add it here if enough people request it. But it’s not going to be on MY blog, that’s for sure.
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