I have always been of the opinion that this blog, its content, its collection of authors and most of all, its community of readers, is a prime candidate for BuddyPress. Having a common signup between comments, ratings, forums and blog posts would be a fantastic feature. This news is the first step in making those features a reality. We will start working on our test version of this blog very soon.

Are you thinking about trying BuddyPress? What is your greatest concern in adding BuddyPress to your blog? What is the greatest benefit?

But our little blog gets a lot of attention from spammers. We are listed on web pages that pin point nofollow blogs for spamming, splogs regularly repost our content and send us trackbacks and well disguised comments are often adorned with links to completely unrelated sites. Moderating comments takes a lot of effort from all of us (we are working on making this process simpler, stay tuned) and even then, some weirdness and mistakes slip past us. We have recently started noticing a lot of comments that seem mildly relevant but link to SEO sites or completely unrelated content that keeps changing.

Do you change your commenters’ URI often when posting comments? Are you under the impression that leaving comments with different links will give those links more exposure? Do you use Short URLs to get around comment spam restrictions? More importantly, how many of you force yourself to comment to just spread your links around? Have you ever left a comment just to increase your comment count? Are you an SEO professional who regularly comments on blogs for SEO purposes? You might be doing yourself (and us) more harm than good.

While we try our best to allow any and all relevant comments to be posted, we do actively remove suspicious comments. We make spam/spammer judgment calls every day, but spam is annoying and nasty and in my opinion, spam is like a leech that sucks off the goodness and leaves the host with nothing in return. It often clogs up the conversation and reduces relevancy. Just look at the latest comments on any old(er) blog with a popular post that has not been pruned and taken care of.

We do however, actively promote, reward and encourage passionate comments. If you feel that we have missed a comment that should have been posted, please contact us. However, if you are changing your link on every comment and linking to various websites around the internet who have paid you for your SEO services, please do not send us an email asking us to approve them. Mostly, dont be evil and smug!

How do you treat suspicious comments that have not been caught by Akismet? We manually visit every comment waiting for moderation and actively remove suspicious comments and any older ones that might be related. It takes time but it is worth it.

How do you reward your commenters? We use Highlight Author Comments and hacked up versions of various plugins for heuristics.

Do you import comments from other places on the web? No. We do not import comments from anywhere. The conversation is much more focused and we concentrate on quality versus quantity. We hope that our content, subject and demeanor encourage and crystallize commenting and participation. Other conversations about our posts on apps such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Twitter add nothing but noise wherein the real conversation in live comments get drowned out. I used to think that Trackbacks belonged in the comment flow. I have since changed my opinion after dealing with some posts with hundreds of comments.

Do you turn off comments on old posts? No. Old posts are gems. Conversations can get started on old topics and need to be allowed.

What do you do?

I would like to preface this discussion by saying that I screwed up the install by adding this blog onto the wrong account and that added to some of our woes. The account bug that followed (we received some help via the support email) was caused by my fat fingering.

• Better overall look and feel of the comment section of a blog: I liked the look and feel. The AJAX interface is spiffy and quite versatile.
• Commenter reputation: I really like this feature and this was one of my top priorities for installing ID. I like it and it worked well. Add this to “last post of commenter” and it is a killer feature to give good commenters some free publicity.
• Comment voting: Useful for readers who want to join the discussion. Also very useful to determine spamminess of a comment. I found it to add to the community feel and found myself looking for votes on comments in hot posts.
• Social commenting: I saw a bunch of people use various types of profiles to log in and comment. I think this feature added interesting bits of information about commenters and might have prompted more readers to comment. I cannot say for sure. I had trouble staying logged in because of my fat fingering and caused myself some headaches.
• Reply to comments by Email: Useful feature. Did any of my readers use it? I have no clue. Did I use it? No.
• Automatic folding of threads: Does it work? Yes! Does it have the desired effect? No. On Weblog Tools Collection, automatic comment thread folding meant that a lot of relevant comments were overlooked by readers who ended up saying the same things over again and missing much of the conversation. It just did not have the right feel.
• Comment synchronization with the blog: We were able to roll back to the default commenting system because of this feature and are thankful for that. But the comments on hot/active posts were not quite at par with actual activity on the posts. This lack of real time updates resulted in less comments and conversations.
• Ability to add polls to comments: Cool feature in concept, barely used in reality. A relevant poll added to a hot post might get a few results but readers don’t use that kind of interactivity unless they want to come back and check the results, which is often not the case. Can be done with a plugin.
• Better spam filtering and moderation features: ID adds the ability to use their own filters in addition to Akismet. But I found these to be cumbersome and Akismet not as responsive. I can’t quite explain this gripe but I can say that too many comments were ending up in moderation and not enough of the ones that I marked as spam were then treated as spam on subsequent attempts. I don’t think the WordPress feature that allows previous commenters’ comments to be posted without moderation works with IS. Blacklisted words did not appear to work as well as I have come to expect them to work. There is also no way to “remember me” on the ID login page, which is annoying.  Having to add co-authors on as admins of the blog on ID meant they got bugged with all the Spam and also meant that they had to be registered users. These reasons were probably the most annoying to me and my fellow authors and resulted in us backing out.
• Ability to record video comments: Cool feature but not used at all on this blog. I see some video comments on TechCrunch but our readers just did not care.
• Better comment curation for multi-author blogs: There is no way to send moderation emails to individual authors (which is a pain for multi-author blogs) and the moderation emails were just unfamiliar and not easy to get used to. Again, not fast enough in moderation and approval of comments.

In addition to the good and the bad above, I also received some disturbing feedback which suggested that some people would not comment on a blog that runs Intense Debate. I have no such qualm and would really like to hear from folks who feel this way. Why this angst?

In conclusion I have to say that I think Intense Debate was a mixed bag for us. If you are not thoroughly used to the WordPress comments system and do not have tens of thousands of comments, it is worth a shot. The ability to roll back is fantastic for buyers’ remorse and I think there is a lot of potential.

UPDATE: And deactivating the plugin was not enough to stop it from acting upon incoming comments. Comments were borked since ID was deactivated yesterday. The plugin files have now been deleted and that seems to allow comments to flow back through. Sorry for the trouble.

In this mess, we have also had a couple of content generators complain that their videos, hosted on sites such as DailyMotion and YouTube, were used on Weblog Tools Videos without their explicit consent. This got me thinking about the possible ramifications embedding videos on a blog or website. I could not find any permission or license information on the pages where the allegedly infringed videos were hosted and so I assumed that we should remove the videos, which we did.

• If the video page allows embedding, does that constitute implicit permission to post it elsewhere?
• Is there copyright and license information buried within the agreement that users electronically sign on uploading to YouTube? Do the video sites allow distinction between the various types of licensed content?
• If the original content provider is retained (such as using an YouTube embed) and a link is provided to the original video, is that enough? How does the regular user know when not to embed without permission? Should a formal request for permission be assumed in every case unless otherwise noted?

I have tried to find any references to laws, discussions or law suits that talk about the rights of the content viewer and embedder and the best I can come up with are discussions about previously infringing content which are irrelevant in this discussion. Can anyone shed any light on this?

To take this one step further, if you display embed code on your blog or website (think ShareThis), are you implicitly allowing your content (whatever the embed allows direct publish access to) to be republished elsewhere? If you do not allow sharing of your content without permission, are you just displaying certain types of social media tools that prevent wholesale copying of content? I know I personally never factored this into my thought process. Anyone else run into these issues? I wonder what the traditional media with electronic outlets are doing?

Lots of questions without a lot of good answers. If you have some insights, please leave a comment with relevant links and I will update the post for our readers.

So I was decking out my laptop with stickers the other day and realized that I really miss having a Weblog Tools Collection laptop sticker.

Weblog Tools Collection Laptop Sticker

So I got in touch with a few vendors and come upon Sticker Giant who were great to work with. Now that I have a sticker for my own laptop, I have many others left on the roll and I am itching to give them away. So if you want a Weblog Tools Collection laptop sticker for free, please fill out the form (closed, reached max. number) and we will send a few out for you ASAP.

Since postage is kind of expensive, if you missed this round and would still like one, we will have more of these sticker giveaways in the future and if I play my cards right, I might even have a way for people to order them online for very little money. Stay tuned for that.

If you are a tech company or blog and have stickers of your own that you would like distributed along with these, please contact me using the form in the menu above.

I like the succinct explanation of the purpose and the listing criterion seem simple and straightforward to follow. Send your information to themes at wordpress dot org to get included in the list. From the site, if you want to be included:

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
• Have professional support options, and optionally customization.
• Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date, and professional looking.
• Include a haiku about yourself to be included.

I am not sure how long this list is going to get, but I am curious to see how this page evolves. I am also glad to see a larger number of GPL based Premium theme vendors on there than I was initially surmising. Cool!

Does anything look different? Does anything work? How about the Dashboard or the admin interface? Did you find any problems? Are you tearing your hair out or are you grinning from ear to ear? Would you suggest that everyone upgrade or would you suggest that we stay away?

This is one of those times that I wish we allowed the posting of screenshots along with the comments on this blog but links to screenshots would be much appreciated. Anyone know of a plugin that allows posting of screenshots in comments?

From the list of sponsors, the list of attendees and the list of speakers, the enthusiasm for blogging and WordPress in India is not lost on me. If you have not checked out the Delhi Bloggers Group or one of the many other blogging groups and partnerships mentioned and you are an Indian blogger, you might be missing out. I am hopeful that the turnout will be fantastic and I hope to see some of the presentations on WordPress.tv

I am jealous that Matt and Om were able to visit the Taj Mahal because it appears that parts of the Taj might be restricted to visitors. Om has an interesting take on the Taj and Apple Computers and Matt has some nice pictures posted.

Despite everything that is going on within the world of content publishing, the fact remains that WordPress is still the easiest way to publish content onto the web. For that alone, I think is worthy of being thankful.

If you feel thankful for WordPress or any aspect of the project, join in the tradition of giving thanks by means of commenting. Tell us what it is your thankful for as it relates to WordPress.

What was most useful for me in that post was a link to another post on the Google Webmaster Portal that helps you create better 404 pages using an experimental widget. Now I am sure there are ways to incorporate a Custom Search within the 404 without using the widget but I stuck with it because the output looked useful. Quick Online Tips had a post on the Google Custom 404 widget a couple of months ago that also talks about this widget.

This link to a fictitious “hotmail” page is an example of the output that our 404.php (in the theme folder) at weblogtoolscollection.com generates. We still need to fix the footer and the sidebars but it works for now.

Some of them are absolute gems such as “First knowledge, then analysis, then ideas” and “A blog without comments is broken“. More food for thought would come from the conversations surrounding such a list. I will add one of my own. If you consider others’ opinions, you will have involved and returning readers.

What have you learned about blogging?

Please help us choose the winners by visiting each of the plugins below and rating them on the linked page.

• Adminimize
• AnyVar
• Attachment Extender
• Automatic Timezone
• Broken links Remover
• Click
• ComicPress Manager
• Dk Obama Gallery
• DoDo
• Editor Extender
• Flaresmith
• Flickr Gallery
• Fun with in-context comments
• Great Real Estate
• Idealien Category Enhancements
• Image Browser Extender
• Invite friends
• Live Blogroll
• MailPress
• Manageable
• Maxref Widgets
• Media in response
• MultiSiteManager
• Nonce! Please
• PhotoJAR: Base
• Picture Increment Cron System
• Post Groups
• Post Tabs
• Repost
• Role Scoper
• SEO Smart Links
• Sermon Management
• Show Me Options
• Sidebars
• Simple Flash Video
• SlideShare Presentation List
• Snazzy Archives
• Paypal API Subscriptions
• Tabbed Widgets
• tWPtter
• Vent
• Vote2Publish
• WP125
• WP Comment Remix
• WP Easy Uploader
• WP Sentry
• WP Wall
• Yank Widget
• ZdMultiLang

Remember to test the plugin properly before giving your vote.

The videos are aimed towards the basics of blogging and range in topics from setting up a blog on WordPress.com to creating and maintaining posts, pages, categories, adding multimedia, choosing and setting up themes, managing users and participating in the blogosphere.

From the main page for TypePad AntiSpam, here are the salient features:

• Free for everyone, regardless of how many comments you receive
• Adapts to changing spam tactics
• Retains quality comments
• Already built in to the TypePad blogging service
• Plugins for Movable Type 3 & 4
• Plugins for WordPress 2.5
• Open Source
• 100% Akismet API compatible

The product is being tested by quite a few bloggers and has already received positive feedback for effectiveness from big names such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. But I hope that the initial successes are not short lived.

The plugin(s) and the core engine that runs the service are both Open Source (GPL v2) and though Six Apart is not sharing all of the rules and logic that run their implementation of the TypePad AntiSpam engine, they are willing to share the core engine code in order to facilitate others in developing similar services with their own sets of rules and logic. Worthy of note is the fact that the TypePad API is completely compatible with the Akismet API (which is incredibly simple to use, BTW) and any plugins that make use of the Akismet API, will be able to transparently use TypePad AntiSpam as well.

What is “Hot” about TypePad AntiSpam?

• It is Open Source: The API and the core engine being OSS provides a lot more flexibility and gives developers a lot of insight into the product. Innovations are the likely result.
• It is free: Free is always good, but can have its shortcomings.
• Simple API: Kudos for building interoperability into the service. We have a common enemy.
• Written in Perl: I am not a Perl snob but have written enough OO Perl to know the benefits. Akismet fought with language barriers and scalability for quite a while.
• Extensible: Developers can write plugins for the service that will provide added functionality, rules and logic that could make the service better and more versatile.

What is “or Not” about TypePad AntiSpam?

• The Engine is Open Source: This poses a serious set of problems for the Spam Mitigation service providers. Akismet can keep spammers guessing because a select few people know how it really works. The rules and logic are not the only secrets but the whole ball of wax is closed to prying eyes.
  It might become easier for spammers to figure out ways around the TypePad AntiSpam service and they could start tainting information to suit their purposes. OSS in this case can be a double edged sword.
• We might see in spammers posing as anti spam services just like we have anti virus and anti spyware services mushrooming over the web.
• While a well funded corporation can keep up with the scalability needs of floods of Ham Vs Spam, smaller services will find it hard to manage and still be effective. Free anti spam services can easily die under the load and reduce trust amongst users.
• Too many sites offering the same service will water down the effectiveness of the intelligent rules that depend on real spam data to target spam. Akismet, GMail and other services that rely on their users’ feedback to fine tune their Spam targets, depend on the large amount of positive and negative re-enforcement to increase their effectiveness. Though this is speculation on my part, my understanding of intelligent, knowledge based systems is the reason behind this guess.
• Though the engine is Open Source, there seems to be no plans to incorporate advances developed by end users directly into the codebase. This might change with adoption and maturity of the product but at first glance, it seems to be lacking foresight.
• Since their API is compatible with Akismet (which is a good thing), this might encourage plugin developers to try and overlap spam services in order to increase the effectiveness of their anti spam plugins. However, doubling up on spam checking will not only increase comment posting latency, it could potentially make their plugins less potent in recognizing spam.

TypePad AntiSpam is a step in the right direction. Six Apart is providing tools to fight a common enemy and is offering up the tools with the right attitude. Some of their choices are suspect in my eyes as more competition for Akismet and Automattic than in support of their real belief in community service and benevolence. Nonetheless, it is a step in the right direction and they should be applauded for their efforts. I sure hope that the weaknesses that they have built into their product does not reduce its effectiveness in the long run and they can help the blogging community reduce the scourge of Spam.

On completely unrelated news, I found a WordPress Theme Design Book by Tessa Blakeley Silver that might be of interest to theme designers. Looks like the book is also available as an eBook. She has also authored a Joomla design book. If any of you own this book, please provide some feedback.