What it would potentially reduce is growing that community

The big question is what is the value of community members in content, links or just monetary value from potential sales.

I might modify things a little in the near future for people who have displayed an extreme amount of trusted behaviour and possibly add keyword luv as well for those that meet similar requirements.

Speaking of your policies, what are your thoughts on my using them for a base to model some of my own?

Well, you know me, I’m always headed in the other direction. I think I might get around to installing keyword luv…

Course, not being an SEO guy, I have less to prove from courting Google’s love.

I would have the same comment policy even if I didn’t have dofollow links.

For me a comment is the opinion of a person, and the purpose of the link is for readers to find out more about that person and why they have that specific point of view.

A competent SEO would be able to gain significant benefit from the authority build up from a personal profile page – maybe not as much benefit as direct deep linking with keyword focused terms but because of the potentially higher stick rate with a lot less friction to overcome on a link that isn’t overtly for link building, any shortcomings are probably negated.

A login procedure only has benefit if it can be monetized by increasing permission to market to people.

Related site doesn’t matter to me – a comment is by a person, so if a person leaves a comment, and link through to something that is related to them, it is a good link.

Akismet? I am not a fan of collective intelligence for comment spam, plus there are privacy issues.

let’s turn this conversation around, after all I do understand where you come from and I appreciate that you do give dofollow links.

i just think there are better ways to deal with this isuue;
you could create a login, and then you can set it up so that people only get auto approved after they made 5-10 comments, whatever you set, but more important, I only give dofollow links to people who have a related site, not just for those who give quality comments, but only those who also have a related site, as that’s more important for you; you shouldn’t be linking to unrelated sites.

and i don’t understand why you have so much trouble with spammers, just install askimet …

cheers,

Michiel

In the past I have contacted the agencys directly and told them to stop – many have just ignored my emails – others were grateful I didn’t write a blog post about it and changed their internal procedures. I should have charged them $500 for my consulting time.

I think my new approach won’t be “naming and shaming” in an overt manner though conversations like I have had with Christina here in the comments aren’t scaleable, and I have had 10 such conversations in recent months.

If my actions threaten your business, change your business – blog comment spam doesn’t just threaten my business, it sucks it dry of valuable resources, creates a terrible experience for my readers, in many cases contravenes the consumer protection act in the UK, and potentially damages my search engine rankings.