Chris, that’s great to know (how you find the comments here to hold chat of interest). My readers are superb at offering help and advice. I’ve learned a great deal from the comment area on my blogs, and that’s just one reason why I’m a ‘launch your own blog’ advocate. Cheers for dropping in.

Plus, i’m not looking for links (in case you hadn’t guessed from the distinct lack of a website to link to)

I would only say if you need a backlink from a comment…you should earn it…at least read the post and comment if you have knowledge on it.

I forgot to add, that commenting on blogs is basically akin to the old days of posting on a messageboard. It seems some people don’t understand the etiquette involved and just love to spam with self promotion for their mindless blogs to gain traffic and ad revenue dollars for click through.

Web 2.0 (whatever wanky term they liked to call it), makes it even more instant for spammers and people with money in their eyes to continuously annoy the crap out of everyone else who just wants to communicate with like-minded individuals – such as the lovely people who comment on your blog.

Additionally, could it be a sign of our own standards of general etiquette on the internet?

We wouldn’t behave this way in real life, constantly hassling strangers to come and see our goods/services, but the internet and the new tools such as blogs, twitter, etc make it easier for this sort of mindless junk. (Okay except for companies who like to give us tonnes of junk mail).

But yes, more it is about marketing and actually regularly checking out what others are doing. I feel like now everybody will shamelesly explain their purposes :)

Late congratulations on your engagement, I haven’t been keeping up with my usual blog following lately. What a nice post, I look forward to seeing your design work for the invitations.

I follow blogs with good content and a good community of commenters who I can learn from. I’m more of a listener than a talker as such, but I will comment when I feel I have something worthwhile to say or if something irks me. I think it’s ok for a commenter to link to a relevant discussion on their website/blog, as it does promote a wider dicussion on the topic, however, inclusion of ‘this is my latest blog post’ links after every comment a poster leaves can only be seen as using, in this case the popularity of your blog David, for their own gains. I know if I had a blog, and I have been considering blogging, I would find it irritating if posters were trying to poach my readers (assuming that I would have readers to be poached!)

Your comment left on my blog the other week David, went into my spam filter. Apparently people leaving comments who been referred from dofollow listed blogs are marked as spam.

Another way the spammers are making life hard for us all. *sigh*

I know what you mean about the “make money online” blogs that have been set-up by people just hoping to make money i.e. without actual experience. There are far too many.

Andrew,

That’s not surprising, but good to get your story. Today my site was listed on yet another “DoFollow” list, and they attract a lot of spammers. I can see the same thing happening with “CommentLuv enabled” lists, circulating again and again.

Rick,

Like Jon agrees, your party analogy is a great one. Regarding Jin’s point about not wanting to “steal thunder”, I partly agree with both you you (not meaning to sit on the fence). It’s great when a commenter leaves a link to a relevant blog post, and I don’t mind if it’s on their own site. It’s just that when people start using every comment opportunity to refer back to one of their own posts, for me it’s too much. That’s happened here before.

Christen,

I’ve seen blog-building tutorials that tell you to comment on related blogs every day, but you’re right. It’s definitely easier said than done, because who’s to say you’ll find content worth your thoughts?

Raul,

Great to know you’re enjoying the comments. Quite often they’ll be much more beneficial than what I have to say in the preceding blog post, so they’re definitely worth a look. Thanks also for the compliment.