Welcome to my blog - a collection of thoughts and musings on the world of writing, books and all those wordy type things.

Sunday 12 May 2013

Moderating Blog Comments

I remember a discussion some time ago on Writers Talkback about blog comment moderation, and the dreaded 'Captcha'. For the most part, it seems that people are less likely to comment on a blog if there is a moderation process in place, and I can understand that, especially as Captcha seem to have done their best to make the darn things practically unreadable whether you're human or not!

On the basis of this, I elected to leave the moderation process off my blogs. I get a notification that a comment has been made, and I can then go and choose as to whether this is suitable to publish, and publish, delete, or mark as spam as appropriate.

So far this has been working just fine. Until a few weeks ago, that is. I did a post called 'Catching Up' and for some reason, this has been nabbed by some sort of weightlifting/gym sort of organisation, and they seem to think it's ok to keep posting on there with completely irrelevant, ridiculously worded phrases. From the looks of it, it seems to be directed from Russia. And frankly, it's bloody annoying!

As I'm now getting them on that post several times a week, I'm seriously considering putting the dreaded Captcha back on, as much as I'd prefer not to. So, my question is, does having this process seriously put you off commenting on a blog?

I'd be grateful for any opinions on the above, or if you have any other ideas on how to avoid the spammers, I'd be grateful to hear from you.


5 comments:

  1. A while back I started getting lots of spam comments. Instead of restoring the captcha thingy (which is a pain) I blocked all anonymous commenting. So far it seems to have worked for me. Might not be the solution for others though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! That's definitely something to consider instead of Captcha.

      Delete
  2. Yes, like Rob I began to get much more spam, so after a couple of days of moderating it helped me decide to block anonymous commenting.
    It has stopped the spam completely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This seems like the best option. Thanks for the help everyone. I shall give it a whirl!

      Delete
  3. I too block anonymous comments without catpcha - I hate the things. Any spam comments are obviously no written by an Englishman, are laughingly flattering, and seldom anything to do with the post they claim to be commmenting on..

    ReplyDelete

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