Comments about Comments

Posted November 14th, 2007 at 3:01 pm by Ryan
Categories: General, Tips & Tutorials

At Blog World last week one of the hottest topics in all sessions was Comments. Whether or not to have them, how to moderate them, how to utilize them, etc. I, for one, am a big supporter of blog comments in general. I want to hear what you guys are thinking and experiencing, so that I can communicate that to the product, design, QA, engineering, customer care, and marketing teams.

There is a “Comments Policy” displayed in the sidebar, but based on some of the comments I suspect that many people haven’t ventured down the page to glance at it.

Give us your $.02. We encourage your comments, quibbles, questions, and suggestions. But please mind your manners. You know the drill… stay on topic, be respectful, and avoid spam, profanity, or anything that violates our Terms of Service.

I’d like to expand on that a little and offer up some more detailed tips and guidelines so that we can hopefully utilize each other more effectively.

No personal attacks: This includes each other as well as Yahoo! staffers. No name calling or insulting. I’m happy to hear your frustrations over features or functionality, but there is no need to insult anyone.
Not an alternative to Customer Care: This is not a place to go instead of going to instead of our Customer Care team. It’s just not practical. If I see certain issues repeating I’m then able to shine a light on them internally, which can help get it resolved for everyone. Which leads me to the next tip…
Be as specific as possible: If I’m going to shine a light on something internally I need to know what to shine it on. If 25 people say that they “can’t access email” that is something I can pass along but will be hard to isolate.If I get 5 people who say “I’m using the All-New Mail, in Firefox, on Windows, and (blank) is happening whenever I click on (blank). What’s going on?”, then we’ve got something to work with. The first one is pretty vague, but with the second example I can go straight to the Product Manager for New Mail and tell him EXACTLY where the problem is occurring.

As Jerry said to Rod…