It’s a debate that probably won’t see any official and unanimous resolution any time soon, but that’s all the more reason why it’s worth discussing. If you run just about any kind of blog on the Internet, you may ask yourself whether you should close comments on older posts. That’s what I did for some time.
I made use of a WordPress plugin that would automatically close the comments on blog posts after it had been published for a certain period of time. This “window of opportunity” would then be extended if any new comments were placed. If no new comments were submitted after this period of time, the form would close and no new comments would be accepted on that particular post.
Part of the appeal of blogs in the first place is the ability for readers to openly express their views and opinions, creating for a discussion rather than a soliloquy. Comments are a great way for the writer (i.e., me) to get feedback and these comments add further value to the blog by encouraging other readers to join in on the conversation too.
As with every pro, there is also a con. The comment form can attract a lot of spam and dealing with all this spam can be time-consuming. Many spam bots and similar operations tend to target older posts, possibly because they may offer greater SEO value or maybe the perpetrators think that comments on older posts can more easily fly under the radar.
By closing the comment form after a certain period of time, you can effectively thwart these efforts. However, I find that this strategy isn’t as necessary today as it may have been in the past. Tools like Akismet can be reasonably effective in blocking out spam in general, so it may not be necessary to close comment forms any more.
In doing so, I can allow newcomers to the blog to leave comments on older posts. Looking through my Google Analytics account, many of the most popular blog posts on this site are not the newest. I get a fair amount of search engine traffic on my Nexus post and my US bank account post to this day. New comments can pose new questions and offer new answers.
What do you think? Do you allow comments on older blog posts or do you close comments after a set number of days?
I don’t find it necessary to close comments on older blog posts for the purpose of circumventing spam because there is Akismet to do the job.
I’m getting pretty tempted to close comments on old posts due to the fact that they seem to pick up more spam comments than newer posts. I’ve also done a couple of posts on topics like SEO that seem to constantly get spam comments.
I like the idea of keeping comments open. But the logistics may drive me crazy.
I leave them open. Akismet does a good job of taking care of the spam comments.
It is always a tug of war trying to decide to keep your blog posts open for commenting. On my blog, I get tons of comments filled with spam. I manually approve or disapprove them one at a time.
I have tried closing after 14 days, 30 days and 90 days. No matter what I do, I get spam!
I have a plugin made that allows the blog owner to shut off comments. Then, you can open a new post up for discussion to test the waters so to speak. Even after being a no comment blog for a few months, when I opened some posts up for discussion, I got spam.
Spam is part of our lives, we just have to deal with it the best we can. Since I am a little blog, I can manage my comments manually for the time being.
However, I would agree that shutting off the comments after 90 days or so is the best thing if you want to avoid PageRank seekers.
How ironic is it that a post which is debating the point of comments has almost more interesting interchange between people in the comments than the actual post itself?