Effective immediately, when you want to comment on a post or other comment on Practical Hacks, you’ll note a change. Comments are now limited to 2500 characters, which equates to approximately 400 words. If you write a comment that’s longer than 2500 characters, it will be truncated when it posts.
This will have no effect whatsoever on 99.5% of you.
I am doing this for a few reasons:
- As a matter of form and courtesy. Comments are just that: comments. They should not be 800+ word essays
- I fear that long comments by some readers will inhibit others who wish to comment
- From a performance standpoint, very long comments require more time for posts to load in readers’ browsers
- From an SEO standpoint, really long comments diminish the impact of the original post as it ends up representing a small proportion of the overall content on the page
As I mentioned earlier, this will have no impact on nearly everyone who visits the site.
If this upsets you, I apologize. But a blog isn’t a democracy. It’s more akin to a benign dictatorship, but a dictatorship nevertheless.
Ultimately, I hope to have a character “countdown timer” adjacent to the comment box, so commenters will know how many characters they have left.
If you’re wondering what 400 words look like, to give you an idea, this post includes 248 words (1433 characters). 2500 characters should be more than adequate for commenting. Thanks for your understanding.
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October 18th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
I think this is actually a good idea even if I will have to pace myself. ;)
What’s SEO?
Perhaps this comment is a good start. Cheers!
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October 19th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I think it’s a good idea. Some of us (me and Till especially) can get long winded. And your reasons for moderating make great sense.
What’s “seo”?
By the way in terms of “carrot and stick” your readers should know that you are very generous about inviting readers to post guest articles – that invitation was extended to me (and I took advantage of it – lot more work than going wordy in comments) and also to Till.
And really a benevolent dictatorship is the only way to go, and your characters limit is really generous. I think that’s plenty enough to allow the interesting give and take, push and pull that has made the comments sections of your articles surprisingly lively, often akin to a forum but with the greater focus provided by your articles.
I guess a good blog has to walk a narrow path between the often inane comments on some blogs (Zen Habits come to mine, the comments are often fawning) and unintentional blog hijacking….
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Kevin Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
SEO is search engine optimization…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....timization
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October 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Keep up the good work. A benign dictatorship is the most effective form of government.
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