A lot of bloggers live for the comments left by readers on their posts. While not all bloggers may not feel this way, it cannot be denied that comments can make a blogger’s day – positive comments, at least. However, there are always two sides to a coin, and if you get positive comments, you are sure to get negative ones as well. What do you do when you see these negative comments? How do you deal with them?

Before we take a look at the answers, let us make one thing clear: it is one thing for people to leave comments expressing their disagreement with what you said; it is another thing for people to leave negative comments which are not at all constructive. Needless to say, it is the second kind that we are talking about in this post.

So, what do you do when you see those kinds of comments in your blog? You have two simple choices: to reply or to ignore.

Reply.

If you do decide to reply, you can do so via the comments section or via private message or e-mail. Whichever mode you choose, it is important to bear in mind that you should never rise to the bait. Oftentimes, people who leave “destructive” comments are merely trying to get your goat anyway. Nothing will come out of replying in a similar fashion. The best thing you can do is to reply in a civil, even friendly, manner. You might be surprised at how a little kindness can go a long way! Here’s a nice guest post over at Problogger to help you more with this tactic.

Ignore.

Alternatively, you can choose to simply ignore the comment. Even better, if the comment is really bad and not constructive in the least bit, hit that delete button! You do not want your other readers to feel put off because of someone who feels like trolling your blog, do you?

Time for your input – what do you do when you get these kinds of comments?

Photo via yoshiffles

Originally posted on October 31, 2010 @ 12:42 pm

Tumblr is no longer just the home of reblogged pictures, quotes, music, videos, and journal entries of friends you follow; it’s also gaining favor with the more discerning content creators in the design and technology circles, turning it into a truly professional publishing platform. This phenomenon is thanks to its relatively easy customization while keeping its interface decidedly simple.

My question is, if Tumblr’s audience is becoming more mature, should it shift from its dead-simple appeal and grow up too? David Yeiser prefers its current approach:

What’s neat about Tumblr is it’s not only a great publishing platform but a great tool for content consumption. […] as self-publishing has changed to shorter forms and varied media the traditional feed reader has become obsolete. I shouldn’t have to click a title of a post to read a quote. […] I think the way Tumblr aggregates and displays blog posts is the future of feed readers. Though I’m not aware of any standalone readers that take this approach.

Personally, I disagree. I follow a lot of people (and non-people) on Tumblr, producing remarkably varied content genres (e.g. XKCD Explained, 53 Weeks of UX, Sweet Home Style) with no way of filtering which ones I’d like to view at a time. Infinite scrolling in the dashboard can only take you so far in browsing ease.

Unwieldy content consumption is a familiar problem experienced on Twitter and Facebook, and by people who want more options, more control. Except there are now methods of dealing them on those sites. It’s even a big business for third party companies. On Tumblr, that remains to be seen.

Dashboard filtering options would be a welcome addition to the site. The reason is that “following” is a one-size-fits-all option when the truth is we need many.

And there lies the rub with a hosted platform, as well as platform that caters to simplicity first and foremost. Notice that as the concept of feed reading, trackbacking, and commenting are abstracted, if not replaced with Tumblr’s own conventions of dashboard reading, reblogging, liking, answering, one is forced to adhere to a closed set of standards inside its community. For a community that’s got such a wealth of content, consuming and sharing and communicating through that content but with limiting, non-standard methods is a turn off. If I link to a Tumblr post from a non-Tumblr site, will the owner of that tumblelog even know that I did?

Again, all of this wouldn’t be so bad if there were more options available, even as premium features. Right now, there aren’t.

What should Tumblr do? Should it go the WordPress.org and Identi.ca route and provide an open, self-hosted platform? Should it take some notes from the old-but-still-strong LiveJournal? (In some ways their user bases are the same.) Should it push its API more aggressively? Should we just wait and see what they’re up to, or accept that it’s really just a different culture from what we’re accustomed to?

As someone who’s enjoyed a lot of great content on Tumblr and is tempted to migrate her personal blog over there, there are a glaring number of things holding me back.

Originally posted on May 23, 2010 @ 2:55 am