European software engineer Vladimir Prelovac suggests blog commenters should not be required to enter an email address when responding to an article. What do you think?
Agreeing with some of the people who responded to Vladimir last winter, I like the ability to see people’s email addresses. This provides me the opportunity to respond directly to a person without flooding the comment field, which can be aggravating if one opts to receive notifications of future comments (which I highly suggest you do).
It should be noted that until I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress, I never saw these email addresses.
On Blogger, people were required to enter their email address and while my email notification included the commenter’s name, I only saw this universal email address: <noreply-comment@blogger.com>.
With Wordpress, if you type in your email address, I can see it and can choose between posting a follow-up comment or emailing you directly.
Thoughts? Do you even want me to email you?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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{ 15 comments }
Your email address should be required.
I think leaving your email address with the blog writer is akin to signing your name and mailing address to a letter you send someone. Unless you’re willing to stand behind your comment with a way to respond, your comment doesn’t really carry much weight with me.
I can see why some bloggers wouldn’t care either way; however, for me, I like to see peoples email addresses. It is hidden, so other commenters who try to immitate previous commenters can’t do so as easily.
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I used to not like the requirement. Now I appreciate it. I agree with you; it gives me the chance to send an out of comment email to someone.
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I believe most users who comment would really enjoy receiving an email from time to time. It’s a more personal way to communicate than a response in the comment roll and shows that you take the time to talk to the little guy.
While I don’t email my commenters all that often, I think it’s very nice to have their address. Once my commenter’s email was bouncing back, so I had to leave them a comment saying to email me!
When I left my first comment, I was wondering why my email address was required, and what it would be used for. So I understand that someone might think email addresses shouldn’t be required.
But I’d still want to have a field for their email address, as it seems only natural to provide it when you’re entering a conversation. (Once you understand that you won’t be put on a mailing list.)
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I agree with Ari Adler – it should be required as a form of signature. If someone has an issue about it they don’t have to leave a comment or they can make-up an email address.
That being said I did have the owner of a site spoof me in a comment on his because he had all of my info. I didn’t say anything about it but have not visited other than to check if is still there and no longer comment on that site. I would think that would send the message about my displeasure.
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I like your comments. I like the idea of signing your email address as a means of submitting a letter to the editor. Let me ask you: If the email field was not there (or if it was optional and not required), would you be more willing to comment?
Do you know of any metrics that the mandatory inclusion of an email address (which I suppose could be faked) could prevent comments and thereby prevent what Hunter calls starting a conversation?
I have to agree that leaving an email address when commenting should be required. Not only can you reply to the person directly, but it also weeds out the ones who are not serious about entering into a dialogue on your blog.
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As a blogger I like to have the e-mail address there as a barrier to spammers (though judging by the amount caught by Akismet it probably doesn’t matter) and so I can engage with my readers if I think they’ll benefit from it.
As a reader I like to give my e-mail address out because by commenting I am engaging with the blogger and would be pleased if s/he were to be inclined to e-mail me.
I can see the privacy aspect that some people may be concerned with. This is something that services like Discus could easily address. A service such as this could (like Blogger) take the e-mail address and hide it from the blogger but then allow the blogger to still contact the reader (so long as the reader’s privacy settings allow it).
Food for thought.
I think leaving the email address in is a good idea. I think it gives the blog author a way to personally reply to comments in ways they may not want to do on the blog, especially if they feel the comment doesn’t belong in the first place. And if people feel wary about their privacy, they can simply create a new email address just for comments. It’s all to simple in the day and age of free email hosts all over the web.
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I think it should be an option if the person who is making the comment can subscribe and add their email..
If they do not want to, they should not have to..
I don’t think it should be compulsory but I do think it should be encouraged. I do worry about giving my email addres out all over the place though – the spammers will soon find it!
I think is should be mandatory as with most blogs. I agree with most of the sentiments above, it’s like signing your comments and also it weeds out the time wasters.
Open communication is always better than random anonymous posts.
I think is should be mandatory as with most blogs. I agree with most of the sentiments above, it’s like signing your comments and also it weeds out the time wasters. Open communication is always best rather than random anonymous posts.
I think this boils down to preference. I’m currently designing my own blog and was wondering whether or not to require an e-mail field (which is how I stumbled upon this article). Right now I’m leaning not to require it.
Personally, I dislike the idea of replying to someone’s comment via email. I think the comments should be about a discussion, or a conversation, and as such, be transparent and happen out in the open (as long as they stay on topic of the blog article).
If things begin to get off topic, you can say “Please contact me via email”, because most blog authors are going to provide some sort of contact email themselves. This puts the initialization of a private conversation in the hands of the reader, which I think is the better option.
A commenter’s email may be useful to have, but I don’t think it’s necessary to have, and so it shouldn’t be required.
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