The majority of Website owners want you to leave comments. After all, the only reason their site exists is for you to visit. Comments show you took enough time reading the post to make your comment. So why is it so hard to leave a comment? Why do these websites want our email addresses, force us to identify little pictures or even worse require us to create an account? All of these tactics seem like methods to discourage comments not encourage them.

Speaking as a website owner, I really appreciate the majority of comments. Your comments give me a rare insight into your thoughts. I enjoy it when I inspire you to add your thoughts to mine. Often, comments will give me inspiration for future posts. And on rare, mind you, very rare occasions, your comments will point out just how idiotic my point actually is.

Aside from encouraging me to write more, comments have other less obvious benefits. Comments also encourage other people to express their thoughts. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with me. Your comments often give me insight into how narrow sighted my world view is. Really, once you leave a comment, we’re almost friends.

Not surprisingly, when Google scans our website, they also look at the comments. Comments show an active website and this is rewarded by improved standings in the Google ratings. Improved page ranking, more new readers. This is something to get excited about.

Before you mistake this for another post shamelessly begging you for comments, let me jump into the real topic. If we like comments so much, why do we make it so difficult to leave them? We want you to sign in with your Facebook account, give us your email address, solve pointless little problems and even then, it sometimes takes days before your comment appears.

If you’re like me you worry about them using your Facebook credentials or selling your email address to the next twelve thousand spammers. If you’re not worried about any of that, your bank just called me about your account, just use the easy link here to log in and your account will be taken care of.

I can’t speak for other sites but I assure you, that’s not why I have you leave an email address. I do it simply to keep the spammers at bay. Without some means of verification, the comments would look a lot like the spam I see in my mailbox on a daily basis. Worse, Opinionbypen takes a hit in its rankings for all the bad site links. We make it difficult for you to leave comments solely to prove you’re human and to ensure that our comments section is a little more than the Craig’s list of bad websites.

Hard to believe  but this is a comment I received on my solar powered chicken coop fan:

Regardless of how frequently I read it, it never gets old. You certainly hit the nail on the head on this one. This is something individuals need to think about. Your blog is really mind blowing and the design is really first class. Really, your blog is mind boggling. It’s important that they know how the structure of online blogs workout.

Really? Individuals need to think about solar powered fans for chickens? It’s obvious that whoever wrote this comment never read my post. What they wanted was a link from my blog to theirs and their name just happened to be a website for a writing service.

How about this one?

Hi everyone we have too good blog on scamandmorescam.com and You can also see all subject related blogs here.

Yep, informative and to the point. Has nothing to do with my blog but I’m not sure he cares.

You get the idea. My Ramsey Hunt posts were getting so many comments touting African herbal cures (amazing how many doctors were supplying these miracle herbs), that I closed both posts to future comments.

At Opinionbypen, in order to leave a comment, you have to enter a name and an email address. Finally, before your comment appears to the public, I have to approve the comment.  To make this slightly faster, I get an email for every comment but it can still take days before your comment shows up.

I don’t censor the comments. Well, I did delete that one comment that said, “This stinks,” but he wasn’t offering much to support his opinion either. I also don’t mind linking to other sites when they’re legitimate and related to my content but I don’t want to drive readers away either.

We love your comments but with millions of bots and thousands of scheming people working hard to introduce you to their favorite method of extracting your money, is it any wonder we make it so hard to leave a comment?

PS – While it may not always seem like it, I usually give several trusted critics an opportunity to preview my posts and offer suggestions when I wander too far astray. This week there were several people that still felt this was a cleverly (okay nobody used that word but I’m sure that’s what they meant) disguised attempt to garner more comments. I assure you that’s not the case. Please do not feel compelled to leave more or less comments than you already do. Much like many of my other posts, this post is an experiment and that’s all I’m saying.

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