Tag boards. What’s with them? And why the fuck am I blogging about tag boards when there are better things to blog about anyway?

Tag boards are an essential tool to a blog or a website’s success, though to some extent it is deemed optional. It gives other users the opportunity to say what they think of certain contents of your blog or the websites you manage if they are don’t have the time, lazy or are just plain incompetent for writing comments in the proper place. In short, it’s a one-stop shop to the blog visitor’s messages to the blog owner, whatever that might be.

The mechanics of tag boards are as simple as 1-2-3. You put your name, your [fake] e-mail if it is required, and then you post away your message. It appears instantly in the tag box. You don’t have to mess up with the site owner moderating the tag board content, unless he personally made the tag board. You don’t have to deal with the hassles of spam-detection techniques in the comments section, you could immediately post your content. The posted content could immediately be seen, The least that you could do in a tag board is registering a nick, which is also a task achievable by a grader.

However, no matter how people want to keep their tag boards clean (aesthetics), decent and on-topic, there will always be people who will violate the norms. Tag boards are sometimes misused by selfish and self-centered bitches who try to desperately try promote their blog in several ways. But we’ll get to that in a few sentences. Tag boards are also used by selfish people who have altogether different motives rather than promoting their site. They could be asking repeatedly asking something from you, they could be demanding you to pay your website subscription and debts, or they are coward people who put anonymous nicks and then go diss your blog content from the theme to the ads to the footer of your personal site.

You see, even though the tagboard is an effective tool, it has its own loopholes and faults. It has created a legion of Internet douchebags. They are sub-divided into 5 sub-sections:

First of them are the people who only know to blog-hop and then post in the tag board. No, they probably won’t even dare to read your blog. At most, they’ll probably read four or five sentences (or paragraphs if they have consciences) and then they’ll post in your tag board things like “HAI I’M BLOGGHOPPING AND I CAME THROUGH YOUR BLOG” or “JUST BLOGHOPPING :)” or just a simple but rude “BLOGHOPPING” message. At least these people are honest to admit that they are not interested, although in a subtle manner - you need to have a brain that analyzes to figure it out, to read your blog from sentence six (or paragraph six) onwards. Then you could immediately delete their comments. Tell ‘em you’re just blog-hopping too.

There is also this species called the link-exchangers A.K.A. the link-whores, which is the best kind of a site promoter. These species would do anything to get their site to be linked to the majority of the websites in their network, even if it means messing others’ tag boards and making it much more annoying. They will post a variety of messages like “Hi, exchange links?” or the shortened form which is “Nice site. x-link?”. Unlike the blog-hoppers, you really would not distinguish if they are interested in reading your content. They will also try to be linked to the best blogging sites of sites that garner much traffic so if they don’t find a tag board, they’ll most likely do it in the comments. Garapalan na!

I am appreciative of beauty and those who notice beauty but I loathe those who go on cajoling other owners and their tag boards, dropping unconvincing and used up one-liners like “hi. nice site”, “hi, nice content”, “nice layout/theme”, “nice picture” or “nice whatever”. At the least, people like these should have decency to just put a fucking relevant comment next to their short one-liners. Convince the site owner that you, as a reader really liked his site because one liners like the ones that I have mentioned above just merely look like tag board comments from a disinterested reader. It’s just like blog hopping with the flowery remarks that contain no substance.

Spam has been a problem in the Internet for so long and sadly for this post, tag board spammers will not go unnoticed. They may be people who: (1) want something from you in a hurry, like for you to put someone’s fucking site into your links; (2) try to flood your tag board, which is the most obvious cause; (3) want to spark flame wars by flooding their messages on someone’s tag board. Or they hate one of your articles because it hurt their feelings. And they want to get back at you but your comment box is closed. For example, if you wrote about geeks being incompetent and lousy in bed, then most likely expect a spam attack in your tag board every 30 seconds.

And lastly, this has been a redundant rant but it ought to be included here because tag board whores have invented new ways to violate the rules of proper posting, grammar and syntax in tag boards. You could see people fill the tag boards with smilies. Posts with irrelevant nonsense and gibberish. Some fill posts with punctuation marks, say they are over-reacting to one post. For the love of God, please don’t fill tag boards because they only hold small portions of text containers in the whole site and they are absolutely no match when you fill them with repeated stuff in one post. The grammar and spelling problems are still there but I’m not going to rant on it as much because several rants from the past about it brought me to no solutions. Decent and level-headed online users should most likely keep the tag boards clean (aesthetics), decent and on-topic.

Now go and post in tag boards. Go, asshole. Keep in mind of these things for you to have a good time with tag boards so that the next time you post, tag board owners will think twice before deleting your tag board messages. Help to keep the Internet sane.