Blogger.com frustration!

November 29, 2007

While getting caught up on other bloggers’ posts tonight, I noticed a frustrating development. Many of the garden bloggers I visit host their sites at Blogger.com, and suddenly none of these sites allows me, a non-Blogger commenter, to leave my website link.
Essentially, Blogger is now requiring anyone who comments on a Blogger blog to be an account holder. Otherwise, you must comment anonymously or comment under the option of “Nickname,” which doesn’t allow you to include a link back to your own blog.
As regular commenters know, the blogging dynamic depends on those links, so that the person whose blog you comment on, or other comment readers, can come visit your blog, if they wish. Without the link, you’ve left a dead trail. You’re on a one-way street.
I am feeling shut out.
Does anyone know the story behind this change? Is it a ploy to make everyone sign up with Blogger? If so . . . phooey on Blogger!

0 responses to “Blogger.com frustration!”

  1. Ki says:

    Hmmm, I didn’t notice there was something different about the comments form until I left a comment on a Blogger site. Did some checking and this is the Blogger development team’s explanation:
    “October 25, 2007
    Subscribe to Comments – by email!
    Last night we pushed a small-but-crazy-useful new feature for all Blogger blogs: subscribing to comments via email. This makes it a lot easier to stay in the conversational loop after you’ve commented on a post somewhere. For example, you could follow along with these discussions from some recent Blogs of Note:
    * Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: An Astute Mustache Observation
    * The Joy of Sox: WS 1: Red Sox 13, Rockies 1
    * Wildfires 2007: All homes saved on Santa Ysabel reservation
    You’ll notice the new checkbox at the bottom of the Comment page, in the identity box:
    In order to receive follow-ups via email, you’ll need to post your comment using your Google Account. We only send comments to your verified Google Account so that someone else can’t use this feature to send you email you didn’t sign up for.”
    I guess that’s what happens when you live in an ivory tower. Nothing else exists.
    That totally sucks. Thanks for letting me know about Blogger’s explanation, Ki. “Small-but-crazy-useful new feature” indeed. Now we non-Blogger folks have to decide whether to sign up for yet another useless account or just comment sans link. I notice you didn’t provide a link on your comment here, Ki, even though you could have. —Pam

  2. Pam says:

    Ugh. I noticed it tonight. I simply can’t sign in for one more thing like a google account.
    I’m totally with you on that. But this hurts. —Pam

  3. Robin says:

    How frustrating! I hope this isn’t a permanent thing. Maybe if enough people complain about it they’ll change it back the way it was.
    Blogger didn’t make it easy to complain, what with the stealthy way they made the change. —Pam

  4. Carol says:

    I just noticed this tonight, also. Nickname? Subtle, very subtle change, but as you pointed out, quite significant for those who don’t have a Google account. Who knows what is behind it? I see nothing on the Blogger site announcing this change. They did announce the new feature of being able to ‘subscribe’ to comments via email, which I don’t think is the same as this change.
    I suppose they assume that everyone will want to have a Google account! Hmmmm now how can we get around this so that you can comment and not leave a “dead end”? Can your nickname be “Pam – https://www.penick.net/digging” It wouldn’t be a link but it would give people a web site to visit.
    Carol, May Dreams Gardens
    Subtle but significant is right, Carol. I just visited your site to leave a comment as you suggested. As you say, it does get my website address out there, but without the link it’s still pretty much a dead-end. Convenience is everything, and Blogger has just made it very difficult for non-users to be a part of their blogs. —Pam

  5. Hi Pam – you asked about this at my blog, too so I’ll repost my answer if you don’t mind a little clip and paste:
    I’ve always had “anyone can comment” checked on my dashboard. I went to the dashboard and looked and it still says ‘anyone’, but I no longer see ‘other’.
    “I saw your note at Garden Rant, wondering whether it’s a business decision to force you to get a blogspot blog. That could be true, but I wonder whether the recent batch of sploggers is another cause. I’ve seen some awful comments out there! I heard that people are being hired to enter the letter recognition codes and add comments that look fairly legitimate but have links to sales sites. Could the new comment rules be an attempt to have some control over these new spam techniques?
    In order to comment on LiveJournal my only option has been to be ‘anonymous’ so I cut and paste my blog address after my signature in the comment field.”
    Could even Google handle the increase in numbers if everyone in the world had a Google account?
    Annie at the Transplantable Rose
    Sploggers are evil. I wonder if that is the reason behind Blogger’s change. In any event, it has a limiting impact of those of us who don’t have Blogger accounts. Thanks for your ideas, Annie. —Pam

  6. How annoying! I’m with blogger but I want everybody to be able to comment and leave a link to their blog too. I’m going to write a complaint to blogger! Thanks for the heads up Pam!
    Thanks for your action, YE! —Pam

  7. I think you can still leave a comment if you have a Google account (via Gmail) without having to have a Blogger account. I can “invite” you to Gmail and so you can get a Google ID, if you want one. Grrrr. If this is a new requirement by Google, this will be very annoying because I will have to set up a new Gmail account. The one I have is private to my family and I don’t want to use it in the blogosphere.
    I’d like to try it if that works for you when you leave a comment. Thanks for the tip and the offer. —Pam

  8. bill says:

    I hate this too. I have a Google account because I use Gmail and GCalendar, but I don’t want to use it for comments on Blogger. I will probably comment as “anonymous” and paste a link in the body of the comment. And I will probably comment less frequently.
    If you use Blogger you can also use Haloscan for comments instead of the built-in comment system. I know this because I use to use blogger when I first started out in the old days when they did not have their own commenting system. A few older blogs on blogger still use Haloscan. Of course it introduces another level of complexity for the blog-owner.
    I know what you mean. This change has already made me stop and think about whether it’s worth the trouble to comment. When you do, however, use the Nickname option rather than Anonymous. At least you can include your address in the name line, though it will not link.
    The Haloscan info is interesting, but I wouldn’t think many people will go to the trouble of changing. —Pam

  9. Phillip says:

    It is very annoying. I was contemplating switching over to Vox because I read that it was the best blog provider but changed my mind after reading that they too require someone to have a Vox account before posting comments. Since most of the garden blogs I’m familiar with are on Blogger, I decided to stay where I was.
    Why do these providers make such rules? It inhibits the flow of the conversation and generates hostility among non-users who want to comment. At any rate, thanks for commiserating, Phillip. And for commenting! —Pam

  10. Benjamin says:

    This annoys me, as I like to get comments and find new blogs and actually–like once a week–realize someone else is talking to me and feel better about myself.
    But, why not sign up for a google email account and have it forwarded to your primary email account? Wouldn’t this solve everything? You don’t have to check your google mail cuz it’ll come to you. I have maybe 8 email accounts, and most get forwarded to my main one; this way I can sign up for whatever I I want, but sort of short circuit dumb rules. Wouldn’t this work? Am I off the mark?
    Thanks for brainstorming with me, Benjamin. But my problem is not that I cannot comment. I can. The problem is that when I comment on a Blogger blog, I can no longer have my name linked to my website, a convenience that helps bring people back to my site and keeps the dialogue open. MSS at Zanthan Gardens, who doesn’t use Blogger either, has just tried using her Google email account to leave a comment on a Blogger blog, but she found that it STILL doesn’t enable a link. This means we non-Blogger folks are locked out of links in the comment field. You see how your name on this comment is a link to your blog? Because of Blogger’s change, your blog, and oh so many others, no longer lets me have that kind of link.
    Sigh. Anyway, thanks for letting me rant and lending a sympathetic ear. —Pam

  11. Carol says:

    Blogger seems to be experimenting with Open ID, which would let people log in with their WordPress, TypePad or other ids and I assume leave a comment with a link back to their url. I don’t know much about it or when it would be generally available. I have seen some people set up a Blogger account with no blog, and in their profile, they add their website url. I *think* Kathy from ColdClimateGardening may have done this. It does seem a bit extreme.
    Thanks for the info about Open ID, Carol. I appreciate all your comments and help with this issue, especially the fact that you complained about the change to Blogger. I may do a follow-up post summarizing the different suggestions and providing the complaint address you sent me. —Pam

  12. bill says:

    …Open ID, which would let people log in with their WordPress, TypePad or other ids and I assume leave a comment …

    This would not solve the problem as far as I am concerned. I will never “log in” with any ID in order to leave a comment on a blog.
    I hear you, Bill. However, I had to do something, so I did create a Google account in order to set up a “pass-through” blog on Blogger that directs visitors to Digging. It only requires an extra click of the mouse for visitors, and it doesn’t require that I sign in every time I comment. I feel bullied into this solution by the Blogger change, but at least I no longer feel shut out of the dialogue.
    I’ll be curious to know what other non-Blogger commenters decide to do, if anything. —Pam

  13. jodi says:

    I just learned about this deceitful development on Blogger’s part on Saturday morning, when I had a note from someone who couldn’t post a comment as you describe. Like Yolanda Elizabet, I will write a letter of complaint to Blogger–as soon as I can figure out WHERE to send such a letter. They don’t make it easy…
    Thanks for the support, Jodi. I hope Blogger listens and re-enables links from non-Blogger blogs. —Pam

  14. bill says:

    Pam – I found that you can put a clickable link in the body of your comment using the “anchor” HTML tag. I have done this on several blogs and it worked for me. I commented using the “nickname” method and then at the bottom of my comment I left a clickable link just like this one:
    – bill
    If you don’t know how to use the anchor tag you can learn about it here.
    Bill, you and MSS at Zanthan must have come to this realization simultaneously. She was just telling me how to leave a link embedded in the body of a comment. I am surprised that the blogs allow this because of the potential for spam, though. Have you found that it works on most Blogger comment fields?
    Thanks for the tip and for the instructional link. —Pam

  15. chigiy says:

    I’m so upset over this.
    It makes me not want a blogger account ever.
    Every time one of my friends wants advice on starting a blog I tell them to go to blogger because it’s free.
    I will no longer be giving out this advice.
    There is no way to get a live link back to your blog from blogger unless you have a blogger account.
    How exclusive.
    This is not what blogging is all about.
    It should be about sharing infromation.
    This just SUCKS.
    Crazy-useful??????????????????
    Free and easy are compelling reasons to set up shop at Blogger. But this certainly is an unfriendly development. Luckily, there’s a way around it. I’ll post an update soon. —Pam

  16. Entangled at ‘Cultivated’ posted a fix that takes a reader to the commenters blog. She posted in on December 2.
    http://tangledbranches.com/blog/index.htm
    Chigiy tried it in a comment at my blog and it seems to work okay.
    Annie at the Transplantable Rose
    Yep, Entangled got there before I did. What can I say, I was busy this week! But I’m going to go ahead and post an update too. The more people who know how to get around this problem, the better. Thanks for the link, Annie. —Pam

  17. Kylee says:

    I’ve had my own issues with Blogger this past weekend, but it wasn’t this. I wasn’t aware of this particular problem until I kept reading about it on other bloggers’ comments. I really hope the folks at Google find a different way to do this!
    I do too, but until that day, there are ways around the problem. See my follow-up. And thanks for the support, Kylee. —Pam