Lorelle on WordPress

Do you have brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful commenters? I do. I often find something someone’s left in a post comment worth writing a blog post about and quoting.

In this Blog Exercise we’ll look at how to link to comments on your site and how to properly reference them and cite the original author in WordPress. The technique may be similar in other web publishing platforms.

Within the WordPress Administration Panels > Comments Panel, each comment features a date and time. This is wrapped in a jump or page link that goes to the comment ID number for that comment. Click this link and you will be taken to the comment within that post.

This is the link you may use to link to the comment.

Putting the comment permalink into a properly formed link, I can reference the comment with a citation link in a sentence or blockquote. I could quote the entire comment or an excerpt, whichever meets my needs for the post I’m writing featuring the comment.

For example, in the comment by Jonathan Bailey on the article, “What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content,” this expert in online copyrights justified calling copyright violations “theft.”

These results are from dictionary.com

Thief: One who steals, especially by stealth.
Steal: To take (the property of another) without right or permission.

There is no mention in either case of the intention to deprive the owner of an object. If someone steals my car and returns it a short while later, they still stole it and they are still a thief. They didn’t intend to deprive me of it, I might have even been asleep when it happened, but the law will still call them a thief and prosecute accordingly.

Also, if you actually take the time to read copyright law, you’ll see that copyright infringement IS a crime.

…It is entirely possible to steal immaterial things. I can steal your freedom, your right to privacy and countless other intangible things you enjoy. Infringing copyright is no different, it is stealing a right granted by the Constitution (Article 1, section 8) and not wanting to call it theft doesn’t change what it is.

The link to the comment permalink will take you to his comment on that article, helping to connect all the dots in the conversation and citation reference.

Using this technique, you can cite comments from within you site, but what about comments on other sites?

On web pages, a comment features the name of the commenter wrapped in a link to their site (if they included it), the time and date of their comment, and the comment. The time and date of the comment is the comment permalink. On a few older sites, the word “permalink” will appear near the time and date of the comment. This is the link to the comment. Copy this link and use it as described above.

Your blog exercise today is to dig through all the comments on your site (or another site if you are new to blogging) for a quote to write about on your site. Increase a link to the comment permalink.

Honestly, some of the best inspiration comes from my community members. Many have a vested interest in the topics I write about and they want their voice heard. By blogging about them and what they say in a new post, they feel like they are not just heard but considered a part of the family in many ways. You give their words weight and credit. It’s a nice feeling.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

Here are more resources and blog exercises on linking.

• The Power of the Link
• 18+ Things You Can Do on the WordPress Comments Panel
• Do You Need Permission to Link to Someone’s Content?
• Blog Exercises: Backlinks
• Blog Exercises: Weekly Link Roundups
• Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes
• Blog Exercises: Trackbacks
• Blog Exercises: Trackback Check-Up
• Blog Exercises: How Many Words in a Link?
• Blog Exercises: When Will You Not Link?
• Blog Exercises: How to Respond to a Trackback
• Blog Exercise: Footnotes
• Copyright: How to Quote and Cite Sources
• What You Must Know About Writing on the Web
• What is a Properly Formed Link
• Changing a Life With a Link – – Blog Herald
• The Magic and Fun of Incoming Links

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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