How to write a comment

in #writing7 years ago (edited)

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Writing posts is hard but sometimes it seems to me that writing comments is even harder. Because of that, I’ll give those of you who struggle with it a handy little guide to writing a comment on steemit.

  • Actually read the post you’re leaving a comment on and try to understand the content

  • Don’t comment something that’s missing any reference to the actual post, the author will think that you just copy&paste it everywhere in the hope that someone will upvote it. Bad examples below, avoid these:

  • Don’t comment just to advertise your own post but it’s okay if your post has the same or a similar topic.

  • Don’t just quote random passages from the post without actually saying something original about them.

  • If something seems weird, check the tags. If one of them is "fiction", the things described in the post probably didn’t actually happen.

And last but not least:

  • Upvoting your own comment looks pathetic, especially when you don’t upvote the post itself. Why not upvote someone else’s comment and do something for the community?

Of course, if know the author of a post personally, most of those points don’t apply. Friends can comment bullshit on other friend’s posts.

Happy commenting!

Disclaimer: Please see this post as a humorous attempt at venting my annoyance about comment spammers. I doubt that the people who are the actual problem won’t even read this. In fact, I’m expecting many dumb comments under this post.

First picture taken from pixabay.com, the rest are screenshots collected from my posts

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There are few things more annoying than comments that are clearly cut and paste and have nothing to do with the material. Doubly so when those comments aren't even accompanied by an upvote and yet proclaim things like "Amazing! I love your work!"

Even a broad strokes scanning of the post - or even just commenting in relation to the title! - is a thousand times better. Anything but the totally useless non-comment.

I recently had someone copy a comment from the same post and post it, was like: lol.

Hah - that's a classy move. Hard to pin down what that person thought would happen...

Why do we even need to spell out the obvious? It's getting quite old.

Or maybe I'm getting old and crabby!

:D

Actually read the post you’re leaving a comment on and try to understand the content

The fact that this needs to be spelt out says quite a lot...

As someone who spends most of my VP on up-voting constructive comments I get, I really appreciate the efforts made by anyone who has their mind on what can be done to improve the user experience of being on the platform, rather than trying to squeeze out another few cents. As owners of STEEM, we should not forget that its value depends on how many invest in it, which again depends on how many use it, which finally depends on whether or not they appreciate being here.

It's weird to me that there's not a lot more people that get this simple idea. That you may end up making more money by investing in others and improving the quality of the platform, and thus boost the value of your steem holdings, rather than contribute to making the platform crap in the pursuit of a cent.

Startling times when people need help on leaving a comment, it must be a deeply harrowing moment to realise your a literacy dunce when your taking advice to leave a comment. Everyone is so scared of what others think just incase they are racist or worse today, sexist that they struggle to leave a thought bubble. Strange times.
Many Blessings all, form the best writer steemit will ever see x

it must be a deeply harrowing moment to realise your a literacy dunce when ....

Not sure how I feel about that comment. Some people are afraid to post anything more than a short "I really liked your story", because of attitudes like that. Readers, (like me), may not be that great at writing. Afraid of being called out for evermore, (these are on a blockcode that supposedly will never go away).
Short quick "I like" post can be for a lot more reasons then the one I tried to write.

Still for: @suesa, I will resteem this post because I found it useful, I may not entirely agree, but it is a handy guide.

Short comments like that often seem copy&paste, but I recently started to ask which part the commenter specifically liked. Honest commenters (like you) usually feel safe enough to explain. Spammers don't react.

And tbh, the comments I really hate are those that have basically no connection to the actual post and just ramble random nonsense. Happens on almost every post if mine.

Yes, that is true. I do use short post a bit, especially when it comes to reading stories. I do not like to point out spelling type errors on a persons story post. Fat fingers happen a lot. If I do not like a story then I just do not comment. By the time I get to the third or fourth post of a continuing story, I start to run out of things to say, other than I am continuing to enjoy the story thanks. I'm not much of a critic, I hated that part of my last job, evaluating people and their work.

Uhm, not sure if I agree with that fully. But yeah, helping to foster a climate where people feel invited to share their thoughts benefits everyone in the long run.

Take care yourself!

Thank you in advance, @suesa
I have read all your in this post.

Point by point the outline is:
-Before commenting on the post of the first person we understand the writing, do not comment that is not relevant to the post or question followed. Like begging for upvote.

Please forgive me if my previous comments in your post could be considered spam.

With this post I have learned a lot about the correct comment ethics

I'm really new to this but already I'm starting to see people commenting stuff that is clearly BS. It's like these people don't realise that just saying "good job" over and over, won't get noticed. Good post my friend and consider yourself followed.

nice post lol
I have read through and totally agree with you, lol
i love your fictions
(i am trying to summarise your comment wall, jk)

I hate those bots more actually, i mean human efforts takes like few seconds but bots are leaving tons more within those seconds

very good advice. i will make sure to not promote my own posts from now on :) i will also upvote you and not my comment. i will be good guy now because of you :) thank you :D

good points! I'll add the commenting should bring any value to the community or enhance the original post. I read posts and if i sure that's a topic that touches me and have my own experiences which may be valuable to others then i got the urge to share it and i'm glad to get some feedback or maybe an upvote. But bringing value to others seems to me always essential either with my own post or by commenting others. Sometimes i had a longer comment than the original was because i feeled it's worth nethertheless i got an upvote. Thanks for the reminder!

I read through all the comments, (58 at the time of reading), there are a lot of very good ones. I left a comment on one of the comments, and mentioned at the end that I would be resteeming your post. One thing I found to be very pleasant with this particular post is that you actually have more views that votes, and a good many comments. It is a rare day that I run across a post with more views that votes. I just wish that all of you really highly educated people on here would understand that not everyone may be as well educated as you are for what ever reason. Things would be a lot better in Steemit if we people could understand that simple concept...Not everyone went to an IVY league school.

Thanks again, very lovely post.

Thank you for your comment!

Well, I didn't go to an ivy league school either and probably never will. In fact, I don't even have a degree yet.

I think the main problem around here is that people try to gain money by spamming non-sensical comments. That has not really much to do with missing intelligence.

I just wish more people would try to actually enrich the community with their posts and comments, not just spam and plagiarize. You don't need to be highly intelligent to produce good content :)

But people need to understand that language is very important on a platform like this. Too many think that Google translate is enough to make up for bad language skills. It is not. And I somehow wish they'd keep to posting in their own language (or a second language they actually know well enough) because posts that are translated with Google aren't helpful for anyone.

I've definitely read other people's comments that use the bs technique of just quoting parts of the blogpost to make it sound like they read it, but didn't really say anything additionally! I'm new here and guilty of upvoting my comments :( I thought I read that as a tip for beginners :( Guess I'll stop doing that now! Thanks for the tips!

It isn't horrible behavior but people usually don't like seeing it, especially when people with more SP do it.

I wish you success in your steemit career :)

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