Great to see you back on this blog 🙂

It’s good to hear that by offering some places to start, you found it easier to comment. That’s great feedback.

I really like your clarification that you read blog posts via a reader (assuming something like Google Reader or Netvibes) – have you considered or do you already subscribe to comments feeds? For example, this blog has a comments feed for folks that want to be sure they get all the conversations as they happen – but it has far fewer subscribers than the blog itself.

Will definitely ensure that there’s an easy way for new visitors to see conversation – thanks!

For the first question, I would have to say multiple choice questions and seeing comments from others. It would have to be a topic I was interested in for me to comment. For the second question, if it is a post I commented on, I would come back to see what other comments were posted. I mainly read blogs in a feed reader, so I usually don’t see comments unless I view the post on the blog. For someone visiting your blog for the first time, I think a sidebar with popular conversations is a good idea to have.

Sounds perfect 🙂
Thanks!

We’ll get you set up with spam-blocking settings/plugin that will take care of that so you won’t have to HAVE comment moderation turned on (of course we can leave that setting alone if you like).

Hey Matt- great that you bring up the styling around breaking up posts. I usually try my best to provide some contextual headers or bold areas throughout a post but the current CSS is really poo and if I use h1 or h2 tags, the text gets pretty darn un-pretty. Excited to tackle this issue with you!

So glad to be working with you, Matt – glad you’re on top of all this! 🙂

I totally agree, Matt – my most-read blog posts over the years are by far the ones that lay out strategy plans or provide all personal opinion. And those actually have some of the highest comment numbers as well. I am taking the lesson to hear to work on being balanced and encouraging comments regardless of the topic or style of the post.

Thanks again

Thanks for weighing in about Disqus, Matt! Currently, the settings are such that if you have commented, and been approved, previously then your comments should show up without moderation. Unfortunately, when I have taken moderation off there does seem to be more spam than I would want to go back and clean up and instead prefer to catch it in real time. Happy to figure out a way to do this even better though!

Thanks so much

DISQUS is great for building conversation and keeping it going as it automatically notifies you of replies to comments. There’s less you can do from a styling and aesthetic standpoint, but functionally, it’s pretty solid.

I would remove comment moderation on your site – this slows down conversation and (to me) says that you don’t trust your commenters to have their comments go up without you having to ‘approve’. You can ALWAYS go back and delete hateful comments should they come along.

Highlighting recent conversation in the sidebar is good feedback, we’ll be sure to do that.

Kudos to your great community here for providing honest and constructive feedback!