Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Joe, thanks so much for this idea. It's one I've been playing around with for a while -- we've certainly noticed the same pattern (with some noteworthy exceptions), and we frequently discuss whether or not it's cause for concern. We've got the data, and would certainly benefit from the experience of putting such a post together, so I might just treat your reply here as the straw that broke the camel's back.

With regard to well-known SEO leaders, I have a theory about that, too -- I like to draw an analogy to classes at a university. In the early days, everyone is a freshman, getting their bearings and eager to try things out and participate. The sophomore year brings wisdom that wasn't there before. By junior year, you could throw the term "expert" around, but time starts to become a factor -- reading and commenting on blog posts isn't given quite the same priority it once was -- and by senior year, you're thinking about what comes next. Then that happens.

I think, for the most part, the industry legends that made this blog what it is today have largely moved on to other phases of their lives. Some are CEOs trying to keep their own companies in order, some have even left the industry altogether. In their place, though, we have a new cohort of freshmen and sophomores that'll take the Moz Blog to the next level. I've seen plenty of folks contributing incredibly thoughtful comments and participating regularly, and I think it won't be long before they're seen at the same level as those original legends.

My two cents. Now to get to work on that post...

Hi EGOL,

No reversal -- they're still gone from blog posts. They were never removed from blog comments (see the little note at the bottom of my OP above), nor were they removed from Q&A. Are you seeing something different? Please let me know if so...

Thanks for the thoughtful response, EGOL. While I wholeheartedly agree that we should find ways to increase engagement, I actually disagree that our posts show relatively low engagement. I think the Moz Blog's comment threads are some of the most extensive, insightful threads you can find, and it's maybe my favorite thing about our blog. A quick look at SEL's most popular recent posts reveals around 20 comments on average. The latest six posts from Content Marketing Institute have a total of 9 comments, and one of HubSpot's blog managers recently confided to me that she wished they could get the engagement we do. Even you subtly referenced a "big tribe of fans" in your comment above. We're incredibly lucky to get as many great comments as we do, and while the "Nice post!" versions are indeed prevalent, we also see some really, really insightful comments, and I don't want to take that for granted for one single minute.

That said, more quality engagement is always a good goal, and I hear you about many folks not having time. I think, though, that I'd suggest folks go ahead and leave that quick feedback in the form of a comment. We do indeed look at every comment on every post, so even if it's only a sentence or two and it doesn't spark a great debate, we hear the feedback... and I really don't think anonymizing it or encouraging drive-by feedback is productive. We want to encourage and nurture a site where people feel as comfortable as possible offering up their opinions, and a potentially fantastic idea might get left unsaid because the person who wanted to leave it saw a bunch of "trolls, haters, and idiots" who'd already stunk up the threads.

It's a delicate balance, but given the choice, I'll take fewer enthusiastic discussions over more quick feedback any day of the week -- it benefits those who comment and those who simply peruse the threads.

I agree 100%, Paul -- thanks for the idea. The Q&A section is due for an update before too long, and I think that's a great change for us to keep in mind.

Bingo. So glad you agree.

Haha! So meta...

Entirely agreed. Thanks!

Interesting idea. Maybe we can have a little tooltip for the thumbs somewhere. Will have to noodle on it.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the kind words, Donna!

The guidelines would be quite simple, I think. If something resonates with you, give it a thumbs-up. If a comment evokes a negative reaction, go ahead and thumb it down. If we get more prescriptive than that, I think we risk losing the usefulness of the system.

One thing we've done on the blog with the design change is added the thumb/comment buttons to the sticky module on the right side, so you can thumb a post up without scrolling back to the top or down to the bottom. If you've got any other suggestions for the future, we'd love to hear 'em -- I'm right with you, often blown away by the quality of comment threads. It's one of my favorite things about the blog!

Yes.

If something seems like it'd be a clue to a spammy account, we look at it. Irrelevant comments (especially those with links to irrelevant sites) are an easy sign. An irrelevant comment with a link from an account that was created that same day (and has the bare minimum profile fields filled) is a pretty good sign that account isn't going to be a productive member of the community. And yep -- if we're on the fence about intent, we'll definitely look at whether the account has been used in recent history (as well as other things), too. We usually opt for the benefit of the doubt... lots of people either misunderstand the point, or make an honest mistake.

You may have already noticed one of the decisions we made when we redesigned the Moz Blog:
We removed thumbs down from the posts. And it was largely in the name of transparency.

Wait, HUH? You took away a method of critique, and you're calling that transparent?

Yes. Here's the scoop: Thumbs down are one of the most cryptic, uninformative, and often passive-aggressive forms of feedback on the Internet today. By removing the mud from the water, we make the entire picture clearer. It's so easy to see a handful of thumbs down on a post (we would almost always get 1-2), and begin hypothesizing what went wrong. We shouldn't have published that one. The topic was too tangentially relevant; it was too long or too hard to follow. There wasn't enough evidence to support the claims. We could dive into analytics, attempting to glean clues about what happened, but in reality, any one of the following are reasons someone might thumb a post down:

• The title is confusing
• The topic is one that I'd like to deny exists (algo update, e.g.)
• The milk I poured on my cereal this morning had gone bad, and I need to take out this frustration somehow
• I once had a falling-out with the author of this post
• I still have a bad taste in my mouth about yesterday's post, which is skewing my thoughts about this one
• I found one of the comments offensive
• My finger slipped on my phone while I was trying to thumb this post up (we've confirmed this happens)
• I didn't like the author's self-promotion in this post
• I saw the new Star Wars trailer, and am terrified that Disney might think including Jar Jar's long-lost brother in the new film is a good idea. I hate everything right now.

Okay, the last one might be a stretch. But you get the idea.

Sometimes a post would receive a disproportionate amount of thumbs down simply because the author was proposing an idea that wasn't popular, no matter its importance. One great example: Carson Ward wrote a fabulous post in 2012 titled "Guest Blogging – Enough is Enough," divining what Matt Cutts would write about nearly 17 months later. The response? 45 thumbs down – one of the most maligned posts in the history of the Moz Blog.

Authors have emailed us in a tizzy, asking if their thumbs down meant they weren't quite right for the Moz audience, and in replying to them we came to this overarching realization: We didn't know why they got thumbs down, and we couldn't find out with any certainty, but more often than not it just didn't really matter. We were confident in their points and their presentation, and real criticism would nearly always show up in the comments.

All that said, we love it when people offer up constructive criticism. We always take it to heart, and hearing directly from you all is the best way we can improve. For that reason among many others, we'll always have the comments below the post. If you feel like a post wasn't up to snuff, please take a moment and tell us why in those threads (please keep it TAGFEE).

One last note: Thumbs down remain available on comments, though that's a temporary stop-gap while we work on a more informative system for flagging comments that are offensive, or facepalm-worthy attempts at links (they're nofollowed anyway!), or otherwise inappropriate for our community.

We'd love your questions or comments on this change, and hope you're enjoying the new look of the Moz and YouMoz blogs!

Little-known fact: We actually do have a way of monitoring the thumb activity of accounts, and regularly send emails to folks who are abusing the system. I'd say we ban 5-10 accounts every day that are blatantly violating our community guidelines. It's a bit laborious to manually review things like that, and we're super-careful not to go any farther than addressing spam/abuse, but it's one of the ways we're able to keep the comment threads productive.

You're hitting a very important nail right on the head, Robert. We actually have an admin tool for identifying spammy or illegitimate thumbs (sometimes people even hit the wrong button, likely with their finger on a mobile device) -- and one conclusion we've come back to over and over again is pretty simple:

Thumbs down are just a terrible metric.

Someone may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. They may have objected to a post just because they didn't know what one of the words in the title meant, or because they've had a bad personal relationship with the author. It's a nice idea to have a very simple, very quick way of offering constructive criticism -- but thumbs down just never end up fulfilling that need. To boot, it's far too easy to fixate on a negative metric; we've had authors whose posts did quite well get in touch with us in a veritable panic because they received a few thumbs down. Even worse, when readers see that a post has several thumbs down, their initial reaction is often, "This is bunk, or at least controversial, which would require too much effort on my part. Next."

Case in point: One of our most thumbed-down posts ever was written by Carson Ward, titled "Guest Blogging - Enough is Enough." It was written in mid-2012, and in it he essentially lays out Matt Cutts's exact argument from earlier this year. Seeing Carson's 45 thumbs down without reading the piece first would turn most people away without a second thought, when the post was actually (if you ask me) one of the most important things we published that year.

All this leads to a decision we've recently made: Stick a fork in them: Thumbs down are done.

As of now, the plan is to remove them with the next iteration of the blog, in hopes that people will instead opt for more transparent and constructive criticism in the comments and on social.

Yes.

If something seems like it'd be a clue to a spammy account, we look at it. Irrelevant comments (especially those with links to irrelevant sites) are an easy sign. An irrelevant comment with a link from an account that was created that same day (and has the bare minimum profile fields filled) is a pretty good sign that account isn't going to be a productive member of the community. And yep -- if we're on the fence about intent, we'll definitely look at whether the account has been used in recent history (as well as other things), too. We usually opt for the benefit of the doubt... lots of people either misunderstand the point, or make an honest mistake.

Thanks for the kind words, Donna!

The guidelines would be quite simple, I think. If something resonates with you, give it a thumbs-up. If a comment evokes a negative reaction, go ahead and thumb it down. If we get more prescriptive than that, I think we risk losing the usefulness of the system.

One thing we've done on the blog with the design change is added the thumb/comment buttons to the sticky module on the right side, so you can thumb a post up without scrolling back to the top or down to the bottom. If you've got any other suggestions for the future, we'd love to hear 'em -- I'm right with you, often blown away by the quality of comment threads. It's one of my favorite things about the blog!

Interesting idea. Maybe we can have a little tooltip for the thumbs somewhere. Will have to noodle on it.

Thanks again!

That's a great idea, EGOL -- you're absolutely right about some people not wanting to submit criticism in a public way, so offering an avenue for them to do so certainly seems like the TAGFEE thing to do.

Thanks, Kevin! Appreciate the support.

Bingo. So glad you agree.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, EGOL. While I wholeheartedly agree that we should find ways to increase engagement, I actually disagree that our posts show relatively low engagement. I think the Moz Blog's comment threads are some of the most extensive, insightful threads you can find, and it's maybe my favorite thing about our blog. A quick look at SEL's most popular recent posts reveals around 20 comments on average. The latest six posts from Content Marketing Institute have a total of 9 comments, and one of HubSpot's blog managers recently confided to me that she wished they could get the engagement we do. Even you subtly referenced a "big tribe of fans" in your comment above. We're incredibly lucky to get as many great comments as we do, and while the "Nice post!" versions are indeed prevalent, we also see some really, really insightful comments, and I don't want to take that for granted for one single minute.

That said, more quality engagement is always a good goal, and I hear you about many folks not having time. I think, though, that I'd suggest folks go ahead and leave that quick feedback in the form of a comment. We do indeed look at every comment on every post, so even if it's only a sentence or two and it doesn't spark a great debate, we hear the feedback... and I really don't think anonymizing it or encouraging drive-by feedback is productive. We want to encourage and nurture a site where people feel as comfortable as possible offering up their opinions, and a potentially fantastic idea might get left unsaid because the person who wanted to leave it saw a bunch of "trolls, haters, and idiots" who'd already stunk up the threads.

It's a delicate balance, but given the choice, I'll take fewer enthusiastic discussions over more quick feedback any day of the week -- it benefits those who comment and those who simply peruse the threads.