Blogs have existed for a long time, and since their birth they have always been accompanied by comments. Visitor participation was one of the main objectives of Web 2.0 and webmasters were hopeful about the countless possibilities that appeared before them. Being able to receive feedback, participation, advice, have conversationsā¦ seemed incredible.
However, over time it has been shown that visitor engagement is not always good: hoygans, spammers or trolls are just a few types of examples of what I am referring to. Many of the blogs that once decided to open their comments and give their visitors the opportunity to express themselves have gradually limited them, to the point that it has led many of them to close comments on articles of a certain age or force the visitor to register.
When a blog grows and increases in visits, the problems I mentioned before also increase proportionally. Weblogs SL began allowing comments on all its blogs, but now registration is mandatory. Microservants have closed them permanently. And with digital newspapers exactly the same thing happensā¦ Why? Because it is more difficult for a registered user to call you āhijolagranputaā than for someone who comes for the first time from Google to do so, itās that simple.
These are the main reasons why I have decided to force visitors to identify themselves if they want to comment on old articles, and I have decided to do it through Google Friend Connect and not Facebook Connect because a hoygan is more likely to use Facebook than to use Gmail, and I have decided not to close them because I believe that if someone bothers to identify themselves it is because they really need help or can say something interesting.
But even if we take away the voice of the hoygans, they are still there, since unfortunately the problems of the Internet come from the real world, and the real world is just that, problems.