New Comment Policy
By Matt McGee on Jul 5, 2008 in Site News
Thank you to all who took part in the conversation last weekend about the comment policy here on SBS. Here’s what I’ve decided:
1.) No keywords will be allowed in the NAME field. This was suggested by Tom Christensen of RightReading.com, and I was already thinking it was the way to go. I want people to comment here for the conversation, not for the chance to get a followed link with the perfect anchor text. Best to use your real name when joining our conversations. If you use a keyword as your name, I’ll probably just edit it, but I might remove the comment altogether.
2.) Links on the NAME field will be followed after you’ve left 10 comments. Many of you are already in the clear on this. Some of my newer readers and commenters will have their NAME links no-followed until they hit 10 comments.
3.) All links in the text of comments will be no-followed. The plugin I’m using should be able to follow all the links from users with 10+ comments, but on my initial testing, it’s a bit buggy.
4.) You still do not need to register to comment. 
That’s it. My sincere thanks to everyone who comments on this blog. I hope you understand the reason this is necessary. As always, I look forward to many productive conversations in the future!
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4 Comment(s)
By Missy on Jul 5, 2008 | Reply
Sounds good, Matt. Makes sense and it may be for the best.
By RKF on Jul 5, 2008 | Reply
That sounds like a great approach - but potentially a lot of work. I hope the plugin works out!
Can you tell us which plugin you’re using? Maybe we can get a similar one for us MT users
Ryan
By Marcel Feenstra on Jul 6, 2008 | Reply
@RKF, “potentially a lot of work”: I would hope that the software/plugin takes care of everything…
Sounds like a good approach, unless you now get people leaving lots of short and relatively useless comments, just to hit the “required” number –on the other hand, real spammers are unlikely to take the time to read the policy at all, they’ll just leave as soon as they see that [some] comments are nofollowed!
By Virtual Impax on Jul 6, 2008 | Reply
If you’re using the same link luv plug in I am, I’m finding it’s passing link juice without the pre-requisite 10 comments.
Now I’m making that assumption because I’m using the SEO plug in that “highlights” the comments with the no-follow disabled and all the links here are glowing red… just as they do for me.