Jeremy don’t you worry about search engines penalizing you for ranking to so many outbound people ?

I write my blog for people not search engines. I am always shocked peoples first instinct when making a site is OMG WHAT WILL THE SEARCH ENGINES THINK!.

To answer your question no. I am not worried.

OMG YOU ARE LEAKING PAGERANK

Sites don’t leak pagerank, they simply ’share the joy’

Free pr6 link! I can dig it!

it helps if you have a website =P

I like this feature a lot. I’m seeing it integrated into more and more blogs, and I think it’s great for growing the community aspect that makes blogs so popular.

I’m already getting traffic from it

Haha

This is awesome!

funny I don’t have a website worth linking to, and don’t list one, but I do comment.

Are you going to make this plugin available for others?

Sounds like a pretty useful add-on maybe make it available for others too

Great way to grow your blog “community” IMHO.

EDIT: I’m guessing that you did it for the last 7 days so that it’s constantly changing and not ratings overall because some people would be at the top forever… ?

-Todd

I will release it when its done

yes:

$commenters = $wpdb->get_results(”SELECT COUNT(comment_author) AS commentcount, comment_author, comment_author_url FROM $tablecomments
WHERE unix_timestamp(comment_date)>unix_timestamp(NOW())-(60*60*24*7)
AND comment_author_url !=”
AND comment_author !=’ShoeMoney’
AND comment_author != ‘ddn’
AND comment_approved = ‘1′
AND comment_type =”
GROUP BY comment_author
ORDER BY commentcount DESC
LIMIT 15;”);

That’s interesting - you’re right though, people design websites for people, not search engines. If you design it for people then the search engines will like you anyway… however this ties in with the “top x lists” seem to go well down on the internet. I remember in the early days of my website the BBC’s site reprinted my top ten list of games on the site - seems people want to know what/who’s popular (or in this case commenting).

This is a great idea. It will be interesting to see if your overall contributions go up with this new incentive to comment. You should track it for a few weeks and see if the trend goes up.

Nice idea, should work well

I love how these small “ideas” we (programmers) have turn into huge pieces of software by the time we’re done with them.

You start simple then keep adding on and on to the point whre you just give-up! Well, that’s what I end up doing!

Nice idea (already done, thought).
I think you have to adjust the html code or maybe check it with Firefox 1.5.x

Excellent idea. Very noble of you to share the love. Still, you are right, this could help the community flourish by inspiring more interaction.

Thanks for rewarding us commentors for contributing to the blog!

OH NO NOT THE EVIL SEARCH ENGINES!

Great idea, and my personal opinion is that you should embrace your top commentator whores:

http://www.ryanjparker.net/why-you-should-embrace-top-commentator-whores/

I hope you don’t mind me becoming a whore.

I’m sure you’ve already seen it but PFA has one called “Show Top Commentators” that a lot of sites already use.

The only complaint I have is that the URL filtering doesn’t seem to work right.

Yeah with the amount of traffic he gets here this is a good turnover ratio. I use 1 month on my site, and a lot of sites do this, too, but at some point if you left it on forever new people would never be able to catch up.

Great plugin! Let us know when you release it

I know this is version 0.1 but for a performance boost, you might want to break it down to two queries. This one EXPLAINs as “Using temporary; Using filesort”

Yee,
it’s time to start commenting more seriously

I know I’ve left more than 3 comments. I want to be on the list!

Very, very cool. I would love to run such a plug in, but right now, I’m not locating the section. Do you have it down for revision?

Sweet idea Shoe. I think you’re going to see your comments shoot up a little :).

That’s a pretty good idea.

awww I liked it better when it had MBL faces

I agree. You write for your target audience. You don’t see automakers making cars based on what the police think do you?

Very good idea - wonder how long it will take to be more trouble than it’s worth thanks to spammers.

Which wouldn’t matter, because you’re caching the output.

I like the concept but are you not worried people post useless comments just for the link?

There already is a Wordpress plugin for this feature. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and it helped stimulate some comments on my growing blog.

I added this at Marketing Pilgrim last week and have been happy with it so far. You will have some try to game the system, which is why I added a comments policy.

Nice Feature!

Hi,
Are you still going to force OpenId, Won’t this make the benifit of being a top commentator redundent?

Hmm… I want that link. Who doesn’t? Don’t you want to be linked by highly ranked, viewed and read blog on the planet. You must be out of your mind if you don’t! Seriously - I read shoemoney - almost daily now. Kinda like his writing style - very informative and speak his mind out loud. Perhaps - those are the skills to pay bills.

I wonder if this will spawn many “this is my comment.” comments, ie, meaningless ones. But definitely a way to get more comments, something every blogger wants. The collaborative aspect of comments is often a great way to get new ideas.

And last but not least: this is my comment.

well that will be very easy to tell… all comments are moderated so people will be blacklisted fast.

Homepage only.

You will get an increase of comments for sure… I know I’ve never commented before but now I’m going to say what I think more often.

Thanks shoe… as usual CRAZY IDEAS

what about myopenid.com users?

great way to reward people for posting good comments… as you have in past, I continue to impressed when some of the big guys in the internet marketing world willing give back.

Pretty neeto of you to do this Shoe.

Anyway, you took the thumbs off? I can’t see them anymore (and OpenID causes problems for me… it always asks me to sign in when I try to post…)

Quote Shoe:

“well that will be very easy to tell… all comments are moderated so people will be blacklisted fast.”

I want to post comment here and want to received that link from your top commenters but I can’t because until now I am preferred to post comment about your blogpost through my blog.

Awesome idea shoe!! I’m in!

BAH! I will make the list without a URL just to piss off 50 people.

I have been seeing this type of thing pop up on other site recently. Not totally sure what I think about it. I mean it is great to get a linkback, but if folks are busy just saying, “great job!” or “good post” or “You’re right on - keep up the good work!” that is exactly what 99.9% of my spam comments are - what is the difference even if a human being is typing it?

…although, you notice, I did list my URL - ah well, I guess I can be bought for the price of a quality backlink *sigh*

Not sure if there is a way to connect URLs to an open ID. Although I’m sure Shoe could write something.

Very creative idea

Layout looks nice.
Pooh.. didnt make the list !

Oh look, now everyone’s commenting… Couldn’t have predicted that!

Just a quick thing though… “A bunch of monkeys took 0.143 seconds to build this.” - I never noticed that bit before!

Is it just me? I don’t see the top commentors list…

I understand the principle, but I’m sorry to say I’ve seen the noise to signal ratio, going wild in all the blogs adopting this list/reward. Well I guess I’ll quit reading the comments here, no biggy.
Just look at the comments above and you’ll see see what is coming.

I have not seen a traffic increase but my Technorati ranking sure shot up fast!

It’s because we (programmers) get paid by the line and not the results!

George - I don’t see the list either. Maybe Shoemoney took it down for testing / configuration?

Guess I should start including one of my URL’s in my replies from now on!

It’s only on the home page.

Very slick, I’ve found that doing this leads to a lot of conversation… which is the point of blogging anyway.

On a couple other pages too I think, just not in single posts.

Jeremy you are already delivering so much to webmaster community for ‘free’ and now this is like “bonus’ama”
Good Luck.

did you actually write the plugin yourself? It looks like a really clean plugin. The one I’m working with has some bugs so all my recent commentators are all jumbled up. Will you be releasing your version any time soon! Keep up the great work!

Is the comment list based on daily? It looks like it changed from total to daily.

I think that’s a great plugin idea.. look forward to implementing it as well..

Suprised you didn’t use an already coded wordpress plugin, I need to use this on my blog.

I have the same thing (except pulled out to the last thirty days) by taking this plugin and modifying the select query so that it only counted comments in the last thirty days.

It’s a brilliant idea.

Shoe , This was really cool of you man!!!

I planned on adding a Top Commentors section to my sidebar as well. But my server is down for the time being. Shoe, I trust you don’t mind if I use your 7 day “mod”?

I was putting up comments, but not all are showing, and I’ve certainly added more than 4, yet not on the list. Any restrictions or time limits going on? Thanks.

My comments aren’t usually serious, neither are they of 2 word “good job” variety.
Tending to post comments only when I think they are relevant, maybe I will post less comments knowing that they will scrutinised more closely.

Great Features from you again..

I plan on adding a feature like this on my blog as soon as I start getting comments It’s a good way of getting people interacting when you are already established but how does one get readers to comment on a newer blog?

Jeremy, it would be cool if you could report what kind of increase on the number of comments per post you noticed after implementing the plugin

I agree. Running a top commentators plugin does increase comments. There is probably also a correlation between the blog’s PR and whether or not the links are “no follow”.

Just my $0,02 cents
instead of

unix_timestamp(comment_date)>unix_timestamp(NOW())-(60*60*24*7)

try

comment_date > NOW() - INTERVAL 7 DAY

You comments probably were in moderation, they go in there if you haven’t had an accepted comment before or if it’s got a link.

Ive been doing this too and its workign well.

Look forward in you releasing the plugin.

Don’t think it’s related to the Top Commenters implementation but there is some kind of distinct issue with the comments in general. Most of the time when I log in the “normal” way … I read your comments on the OpenID issues .., and have some of my own, have no idea whey you are actually uisng it, makes MBL look secure … anyway. the server just sits there afyter I click the Add Comment button and doe snothing … even an hour later nothing will have happened. A few weeks ago I pressed the button more thna 100 times and the next day saw that my comment had actually gone through … twice, sorry ’bout that.

It’s aWordPress infrastructure, so sthings should work the same as other blogs (using Windows XP and FireFox 1.5.0.10 …. wonder what’s up?

Hmmm, just to add some info to the hunt, it appears the problem might be relates to CoComment. My comment above sat more thna 2 hours without a response, I turned off coComment, refreshed the SM page and reposted … instant gratification.

ok, indeed it seems to be a conflict with CoComment. Eeven though I am signed out of CoComment the CoComment bar still appeasrs in the comment box and the submit comment process seems to hang forever… physiclaly clicking the “x” on the Cocomment bar and then pressing “Submit” makes the comments work correctly … shame, though, becuase CoComment is very much a part of my blogging … ideas from the rish and famous … or just somebody who knows how CoComment and WordPress interact?

Just a test: If this comment is seen, then the OpenId method works on this post.

Mark Johnson
techzoogle.com

I just left a comment using OpenId but it didn’t show up. Not sure what happened as it seems to take it fine within the OpenID authentication area and it came back to this URL, I didn’t see my comment.

hook me up with that job…

I did the same thing and it’s helped stimulate conversations a good bit. Actually, I had top commenters before, but it was top of all time, and there were a number on the list that had long since stopped coming by. So I shortened the window to make it more representative.

When will you be releasing this script? I’d love to add it to my blog.

This has been creating a lot of recent activity b/c people love backlinks from your site. Great addition, I just hope it doesn’t get to the point where people are commenting anything just for the backlink.

It is an interesting idea. Can you publish your results about the effect of this marketing technique?

It’s so cool, I should leave more comment

This is a great way to pay back loyal readers. Thanks for the plugs.

i am wondering can we have link that show all time comment stats aswell. so that i can see all time comment poster here. Just an idea.

I’d like to install it on my blog too. Seems a great way to promote comments. Can you share a link to the plugin?

Regards, George

Comments have gone up.