For those who don’t know, there’s a WordPress plugin that can show top commentators in the sidebar. Many WordPress blogs utilize this plugin to reward their readers who regularly leave comments and to also encourage readers to comment more and be more involved. The list does not only display their names, but it also links them to their sites if desired.
This single link can be more helpful than you actually think, John Chow shared an evil top commentators trick earlier this year. So, by using this plugin, the blog and the readers get rewarded. Do they? A problem that could arise from this would be the start of low-quality comments and/or spam. John Cow recently had to ban someone because of this.
A simple way to fix this would be to just display comments after admin approval. However, many bloggers have a busy schedule and/or receive a large amount of comments daily. So, having to wait for admin approval hurts the blog discussion between readers. Spam comments can be easily taken care of, but what about low-quality comments? How will you decide what crosses the line and what doesn’t?
Show top commentators or not? Quantity over quality or quality over quantity?
Our readers suggested, and we utilized in response, a most recent comments sidebar plugin that includes their name and the first line of their comment. We have also made it possible to subscribe to comments via email.
hello, im using this plugin to encourage my reader to give a comment “D its worked!
I don’t mind banning a commentor if they are consistently negative as they were at John Cow. It is better to have good karma than bad karma.
Terrific article by the way. I will link back to this in the near future.
@skarld: Thank you for sharing. I might try that in a few weeks.
@vangardx: That’s good to know. By the way, I can’t visit your blog for some reason.
@Mark: I think most people would agree with that. Thank you for the compliment and I’ll definitely visit the post linking back to this.
I display Top Commentators. My friend who reads my blog says he likes the idea of seeing his name listed in the Top list. So yeah, I recommend it.
One thing I’m kind of puzzled about is the lack of ability for Wordpress to move comments around when people comment off-topic. It’s weird that people would leave a comment as if he/she is trying to send me a private email. I had no choice but to delete those comments, which is painful to do. Comments are like gold to me.
Nice plugin, but is it posible top somehow som top “commentators and posters”? I can only make it work as top commentors.
Best regards
I don’t mind taking a bit of time and moderating my comments.
Thank you for sharing. I might try that in a few weeks.