• aaytch on Skype Journal Comments -- We'll Get It Fixed

  "SJ is a widely-read blog (typically in the top 1% of all blogs on the Internet) and we draw an enormous amount of comment spam. Our spam filters clean out about a thousand a day but a dozen still get through for each human comment. So I moderate .... [snip]. I'm working on technical means to improve this but I'm not there yet."

  Phil,
  I'd like to see where those statistics on Internet blogs come from.

  I of course empathize with your dilemma, but the signal to noise ratio, as it were, keeps going down. To encourage good comments and make the blog interesting, you have to have a strict posting policy. I'd much rather see no comments at all than trivial comments.

  I note also that the Skypejournal website is very flat. You have some editor "personalities" and their postings, plus a "river" of comments (flowing who knows where). That's it. The site design does not reflect the multiple markets that Skype serves (potentially at least), nor the layers of functionality in the software itself.

  aaytch

• Phil Wolff on Skype Journal Comments -- We'll Get It Fixed

  aaytch, please accept my apologies for the slowdown in post moderation. Your concerns are valid so let me clarify.

  SJ is a widely-read blog (typically in the top 1% of all blogs on the Internet) and we draw an enormous amount of comment spam. Our spam filters clean out about a thousand a day but a dozen still get through for each human comment. So I moderate the comments, which means that, for now, they are slow to flow through the system. They are slower when I'm on the road for business (last week in San Diego for the Internet Telephony conference) or for family (this week). I'm working on technical means to improve this but I'm not there yet.

  I do filter for content, a little. Since we started in February 2005 (21 months ago), I've stopped about three or four comments that were hand written spam, two more featuring racial slurs, a few where the same comment was reposted by accident, and a handful that appeared to be randomly generated words. Since I launched the comment river on the front page, I sometimes edit a comment so it fits in the narrow column, but not to change a comment's meaning.

  If you Google for "Naked Conversations", you'll find an online conversation about blogging and online community. Authenticity and transparency are core values of the blogosphere. As people take up online writing, especially on behalf of an enterprise, those values and the practices which embody them need to be taught; the Israel/Scoble book is a fine place to start. We aspire to live up to that ethic.

  Thanks for keeping us honest. Your thoughtful and heartfelt observations are always welcome.

• aaytch on Skype Journal Comments -- We'll Get It Fixed

  I don't know what your definition of "naked conversations" is (your link explained precisely nothing), but my definition does not include having a gatekeeper. Skypejournal is the one of the few Internet blogs I know of where a gatekeeper, a.k.a an editor, prevents free critique of editors' postings. So, if you're going to talk about "naked conversations" being at the core of Skypejournal, and if you're going to edit (even moderately) or slow down the pace of readers' responses, there might be a credibility issue.

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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