A word about WordPress comments

This blog is published using the free version of WordPress. As a blogging platform, WordPress is usually pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, the WordPress folks made an update to the Comments feature that leaves many people who currently have or at one point in time had a WordPress account in an uncomfortable position. If you’re commenting on a WordPress blog that requires a name and email address (as most do), your comment may be eaten or lost if  you enter an email address that has been associated with WordPress at one point in time. Typically this happens when you are not already logged into WordPress.

Yeah, this change really sucks. I know because it happened to me a couple of times last week while leaving comments on blogs that are also manged through WordPress. At least the glitch that led to comments being lost even if you are already logged in has been fixed.

I’m lifting the requirement for a name and email address before commenting to see if that will result in a better commenting experience for people or if it leads to an unholy mess of spam. I’ll try it for a few days and report back.

In the meantime, check out the link above to the notice in the WordPress forums about how this affects you if you have ever had a WordPress account. I’m not sure if you can cancel an unused WordPress account since the thread doesn’t give that information, but if you do give it a try, you should be able to report back here with your results either way since I’ve changed the comment settings.

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