It would have been nice to have had a list of the top Five or Ten reasons for rejection. So people can learn what is acceptable and what is not.

Perhaps even a list of recommended types of comments that are very acceptable.

George

These are the basic problems we have had. Non-meaningful comments, or someone who obviously just wants to get clicks. I believe that all comments should be meaningful or they should be deleted, because it serves no purpose at all.

As I scan through the 285 comments in our review queue right now, half of them are ‘opportunists’ like what Lance just identified… ie: They have no real intention of adding value to the discussion.

The ones that I hate us having to reject are the 300-700+ word comments that are hugely thoughtful disagreements with the author.

Our guiding review policy is to only accept comments that add value to the discussion and do not disparage or make our members look bad.

The other types of comments that I wish we didn’t have to reject are positive thoughtful comments and then the article commentor does this stupid thing where they keyword stuff their name …example “Car insurance - Phoenix” instead of “John” or something… so we have to toss their awesome comments because they keyword loaded their comment name.

Later today I hope to share with you what our top rejection reasons will be once our team identifies the top reasons for the new drop down box we’ll be using.

I agree that this is really a very interesting subject! I’m glad you decided to discuss it!

Why do you think that “Good article” is not a quite good comment? “Thank you” is also a wonderful comment! Why do you reject them?

On the other hand, I like when people comment, even if they disagree with me (in other sites where I submit my articles) and I can explain them what I mean or talk with them if they have the disposition to continue.

It affirms and for many, I’m sure that is a ‘value’…but not enough value for us to accept the comments.

If they would say, “Thank you… your article really helped me to solve a specific problem I was having”… we might let one like that pass… but just “Thanks!” is going to be rejected as non-substantiative.

I believe you should accept short comments. They are better than nothing.

I also believe you should accept the comments of those that disagree with the author.
If the author wants, he or she may delete the comment.
Sometimes is good for an author to give an answer to someone that disagrees with him/her so that other people may understand the same point… and for many other reasons.

I didn’t know you only accept good comments…
This is not fair with the public.

I couldn’t delay previously, but now I want to tell you which comments I had in other sites, with the same articles that I first submit to EA: (Now I don’t have much time either, so forgive my English)

“Thanks for sharing”, “Interesting article”, “Loved this article”

And also negatives: In depression: “Resistance? You don’t know what depression means…”

Now, in my articles about self-abuse the comments were heavy (and the discussion worse)… but thanks to them, I wrote other three articles about this matter (I already wrote 6 about this problem) to explain to the teens that were attacking me what really means self-abuse and why they have to stop doing it.

Thanks to the comment I had about resistance I wrote another article about this matter and it has many views and clicks.

So, only now that you explained us your rules I can understand why people don’t leave comments in my articles here at EA!

First of all, they have to find the place to comment in the top of the article After reading the entire article.
Why do you make the readers go all the way up after finishing the article if they want to leave their comment?
The reader should be able to write his or her comment immediately after reading the article, like it is in other sites.
I really cannot understand why you decided to put the comments over the article (in your blog it is under, when we finish reading the article, what is logic and easier).

And can you explain me why the reader has to go all the way down and read the 2 lists you put before the stars where he or she shall Rate the article he or she read before?

You make things too complicated! If I was only a reader I would Never go up to leave my comment. If I would not find the place where to leave my comment easily in front of me after reading the article I would never care about leaving my comment.
I would never rate the article as well, because I would have forgotten the article I had read above, after reading the 2 lists you put in the way until the reader finds the place where he or she can rate the article!!

What kind of organization is this?
Do you want to have comments and communication between the authors and the readers?
It doesn’t seem so, with your rules for comments and with the way you organized your site.

There a alot of website owners who hire people to comment on blogs and sites just to get their links out their. Obviously these are not sincere people, even though the comments are nice and friendly.

In some respects, EzineArticles is trying to keep the spammers out, which will ultimately keep up the quality of their site. It’s usually a tough call doing this though.

This type of commenet back link will naturally attract spammers who want link juice to their sites. I can better understand EzineArticles stance now!!

We use the NOFOLLOW attribute on all article comments pages UNTIL there is (1) or more comments added to an article because we don’t want the search engines to index comment pages that have no unique value in them yet.

We do allow full link value to those who post comments on any articles that we’re able to accept. Same goes for this blog… with the only difference is that on this blog, we’ll accept full out disagreements with our opinions (such as Christina’s). Healthy debate is good.

———-

Christina,

1) Comments are on a separate page because we’re an article syndication site first and a discussion thing second.

I don’t want publishers to think they can syndicate the comments left on articles because we don’t allow that. Putting the comments on the same page as articles would blur that line.

2) The rating system could go higher on the page, but we’re not going to do that until we can find a useful way to use the article ratings to affect the way we present articles in each category. In other words, we’re not going to change it this year any more.

I do like your spirit because we do love comments being left on articles (it’s a sign of user engagement). Perhaps we could find a way to become more comment friendly when we introduce the ability for each author to choose NO syndication on their articles and then we could display comments on those articles on the same page.

3) Yes, we want communication between our authors and our users. Unfortunately, many authors do not handle rejection very well. That would be an understatement. We’re not willing to lose our thin-skinned authors because we care about the almighty comment debate more than we care about their happiness as a member.

Some people don’t agree with us because they don’t understand our thoughts, other people have bad experiences and see reality through their past, there are many reasons why someone may disagree with the author, which will not expose him or her, on the contrary.

The author has the chance to prove that he or she is really an authority when answering to his or her enemies.
Even if an author is only representing somebody else, there are more than one thousand ways one can answer to attacks in a very intelligent form. The authors shall not be afraid of rejections and criticism. They help very much!

Without criticism from the audience, how would we know that we are really helping them with our work?
Or are we writing articles only to promote our business without caring for our readers’ opinion? If we are not helping them, they’ll stop caring for what we say.

The contact with the public is a luxury we can have in the Internet. We shall use this possibility and be thankful because we can have it!
It generates many new articles because the author has to explain to those that disagree with him or her what his/her words really mean, using more examples, explaining better, etc…

And, you better make things easy for the readers!
When a reader leaves a comment, he or she is making a favor to the author!
You have to help the reader want to leave a comment!

BAD GRAMMAR
PROFANITY
SPAM
NEGATIVE
NOT RELATED
PROMOTIONAL
NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL

In Jan of 2008, we’ll double back to see a breakdown of the December 2007 article comment rejections so that we can make further decisions on what to change or adjust.

I understand that you have to keep the “thin skin” writers happy. That’s your bread and butter.

I agree fully with keeping up the quality of the site. It’s better for EzineArticles in the long run.

I imagine that you’ll have to keep staff on hand to make these manual comment decisions each time.

“NEGATIVE” means the person was being a jerk, is a jerk, perceived as a jerk, and his or her jerkish comments have more to do with where they are at in life than anything our member/author did to provoke the negative comments.

We have (17) talented people on our editorial team and a couple of them help to manage article comments on a daily basis M-F.

A long time before I started writing articles for EA, I read an article that I liked very much. I was on a hurry but since the guy made me feel better, I wanted to say thank you and this was my comment: Thank you! Then I thought it was too cold and I added: “Thank you for your encouraging words”. But I wrote so much because I’m a writer… Other readers believe that the “Thank you” or “Thanks for sharing” is more than enough to show to the reader they liked the article. You have to accept that kind of comment and with Gratitude!

Everyone will understand that we at EA accept only compliments… and you won’t have to reject so many comments.

http://www.sciencentral.com:80/articles/view.php3?article_id=218393029 .

Well thats what studies show, thus those who flame others on the Internet or write negative comments, if they are competitors, have an unfair and a rather unfortunate advantage, think on this.

Interesting site, Lance. I bookmarked it!

Is there any way that EZA can provide links to articles that have comments on them? Like right now, if I want to see if an authors’ article has a comment, I have to click on each article on their profile page to see which one has the comment.

Is there any way that this could simply be a link on the author’s profile page?

Thanks!

The feature you seek already exists.

Log in: http://Members.EzineArticles.com/

Click on AUTHOR TOOLS, VIEW MY ARTICLE REPORTS, select your author name… and look at the “Comments” column. You can even sort your article report by which article of yours has the most comments.

Thanks for that info, but I was wanting a way to see comments articles other than mine?

See, if I go to Lance’s author page, I’ll see how many articles he’s published, but I’ll also see a line that states how many comments he’s had on his articles.

What I was wanting to know was if there was a way to create a link on his profile so that I could see the comments that were left on some of his articles (or anyone else’s articles, for that matter).

See what I’m saying? Hope that helps.

Thanks!

I had my comments turned off for about 18 months, as I did not want jealous folks posting comments there. The Internet has a way of bringing out the dredges of humanity. So, I have a very much disproportionate amount of comments per article. The comments that I have gotten, are fairly average and nothing bad or very good for that matter. I believe the comment section is difficult to use and not so easy to find unless you are looking for it. Because it is at the top right, and once you scroll down and read the article, you have to go looking for the comment button. I believe if it were re-positioned on the page at the bottom there would be 3-4 times as many comments. Why this obsession with my writings? I mean who cares, I am one person in a Global Society of 6.6 Billion people? are you a stalker?

Lance

No, I’m not a stalker at all. I used your name as an example in this thread because I saw that you had commented here. Your name was chosen off the top of my head. I wasn’t trying to single you out in any way.

Please don’t accuse me of being something that I’m not. Thank you.

Also, thanks for pointing out that perhaps being able to follow comments on an article may not be that important after all. I was curious about it, but I suppose it’s not really that important for a reader as it may be for the author.

I’m glad that you feel safer. I have no idea why you wouldn’t feel safe, since we’ve spoken cordially by email as well. I just feel that asking me if I was stalking you was a bit uncalled for since I respect the work that you have done here at EA and just think that’s it’s pretty awesome that you have written as many articles as you have.

And I do see your point about the comments being used against an author. It’s helped me realize that what really matters is that readers are reading my articles and visiting my site.

So, yes, I totally concur, Lance

I see now what you’re seeking.

One of our internal goals this year is to further unlock the value trapped in the EzineArticles.com system… and comments on articles would be something we’d be open to making easier to find via an internal search engine of some kind.

I’ll add it to our developer to do list.

Check it out… DONE:
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert_bio=Christopher_Knight

You can review COMMENTS on any member who has an extended bio uploaded…and you can sort by MOST comments to LEAST.

Cool, eh?

Thanks a lot!