Under each post in OS Notes there is a box for sending a comment. What you write does not appear on the page there and then. We read what arrives, and only the ones we decide to publish are shown, as “what readers told us”.
That is not how a normal blog comment section works. Here is why we did it that way. Since that on its own would only be the flattering half of the story, the weaknesses of the decision are in the second half.
1. First, there was a technical reason
To be honest about the order of things, this came first.
This is a static site (we wrote about that in a separate post). The HTML is built in advance, and visitors are simply handed it. There is no mechanism for putting what someone writes onto the page on the spot.
That does not mean it is impossible. Embed an external comment service and it works. But then there is one more thing to administer: another login, another set of terms, and a problem on the day that service shuts down.
Stopping at “we cannot do it technically, so we will not” would be lazy. So we went back and asked whether it was needed at all.
2. Comment sections on company sites are usually empty
Something we noticed while going round the sites of restoration and interior firms: even on sites with a comment section, there are almost no comments.
The reason is obvious once you think about it: the people reading are staff at management companies and property owners. Almost nobody looks at a contractor’s site during work and posts under their real name. If they have a question, they ring up or use the contact form.
Meanwhile, spam definitely arrives. As long as there is a comment box, promotional posts from overseas keep being sent automatically. Moderation keeps them off the page, but then someone has to delete them every day.
And there is the look of the thing. “0 comments” sitting under every single post looks lonelier than having no box at all.
3. If it only sends, we can choose
So we made it a box that sends rather than a box that posts.
- Readers can send thoughts or questions from the bottom of a post
- What is sent does not appear anywhere on the spot
- We read it and publish a selection from those where we have consent to publish
- Even after publishing, it can be taken down
Spam simply arrives with us and never appears on the page at all. No moderation queue either.
Now, the weakness of this decision
This may be the real point.
“If you are choosing, can the published comments be trusted?” — quite right.
Line up only what suits you and it is advertising dressed as customer feedback. It is the same thing that makes those boxes full of “extremely satisfied!” on contractor sites look the way they do. The strength of being able to choose is also, exactly, the weakness.
So we settled how we would choose first, and published it.
What we do not publish
- Anything where we do not have consent to publish
- Anything that identifies a person or a property
- Anything that is only praise
The third one is the crux, we think. Lining up “great post!” tells the reader nothing. It only looks like it was planted.
What we do publish
- Anything specific about what was useful, or what was hard to follow
- Anything with a practitioner’s view in it
- Criticism that is uncomfortable for us
And we do not rewrite what we are sent. Only typo corrections and masking of anything that identifies a person. We would rather not publish something than tidy it up to suit ourselves.
These criteria are set out in an internal working document, and also written here. Putting the criteria out first makes them harder to bend later.
For anyone weighing up the same thing
If you are unsure whether to put a comment section on your site, we think the order of questions is this.
- Do readers have a reason to post? B2B, under a real name, during working hours. If not, you do not need it
- Is there someone to delete spam every day? If not, it goes bad the moment you put it up
- If you only want a response, there are other ways. A two-button “was this useful?” does get pressed
We chose 3. We realised we only wanted a response — we did not want a message board.
If you have something to say about this post, please send it using the box below. The more uncomfortable it is, the more it is worth publishing.