At Weblog Tools Collection, we use the default commenting system with Highlight Author Comments added in to highlight the post author’s comments (of course). I prefer to stick with the default comments myself, but have used IntenseDebate on sites that need a bit more. What do you use, and if you’re using an alternative commenting system, what led you to the one you chose?

I don’t believe a commenting bill of rights needs to be created in which all blogs should follow. However, I do think that each blogger should create and make publicly accessible a commenting policy. This policy should clearly explain what you as the blog author will do with comments posted on your site, who retains ownership of those comments and explain circumstances which would require you to edit an end user’s comment.

For those of you that agree, I’d like to draw your attention to Alex King’s Comment License WordPress plugin. This plugin makes it as easy as 1 2 3 to add a commenting policy to your blog.

After downloading, uploading, then activating the plugin, browse to ADMIN-SETTINGS-COMMENT LICENSE. You should see something similar to this:

Click anywhere inside of the text field and then create your own comment license. Once you click on the UPDATE COMMENT LICENSE button, the text will be saved and displayed just above your commenting form on your blog.

If you notice that the license is not being displayed on your theme, it may be because your comments.php template is missing ‘comment_form‘. In order to add this functionality, read the readme.txt file included with the plugin download package as that contains the line of code that will need to be placed within your comments.php template file.