One of the great curses of internet blogs is spam comments.
On PrefBlog, I have an ‘open comment’ policy – you have to sign in, but comments are posted immediately (they are not held for approval). If anybody wants to comment, I say, then what’s the big deal?
Many dubious characters take advantage of this and post links to their malware sites, scraper sites, ad-sites, you name it. There are various ‘bulk pinging’ sites on the net that makes this easy for script-kiddies. It’s annoying and if there’s too much spam on the site then Google et al. will assume that the site itself is spam – not something I want for PrefBlog.
So my blog software allows for the automatic checking of posted comments, blacklisting some and holding others for moderation, depending on whether it matches anything in a specified list of keywords. One of my daily tasks is to clean out the comments and update my keyword lists.
And today I reached a milestone: over 100,000 spam comments have been posted since PrefBlog began publishing. And today I’ve greatly reduced the size of the database by permanently deleting all comments marked as spam.
Other statistics of interest: 4,302 posts in 32 categories; 6,833 approved comments (mostly trackbacks, in which one post refers to another and leaves a track-back comment. I like this feature).
It would be nice to implement a policy (if the software allows it) that any user must have her/his first 3 comments manually approved by a Moderator (I’m afraid the initials are JH, and he’d not looking for more work) before subsequent comments are automatically approved.
I scan http://www.prefblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2 to check the latest comments and most of the time it’s just a page full of spam, and there’s no “next page” to click on.
Adrian
The software does allow the first comment to be held for moderation, but I have resisted implementation because I like the idea of giving new commenters instantaneous gratification. I personally dislike making a comment on a blog and then having to check back later to see if it’s been approved. Then if it hasn’t been, I’m left wondering whether my comment was deemed unsuitable for the bloggers ego, or was simply swept up in a mass deletion.
However, given this suggestion from an established commenter, I will revist the decision and possibly change it.
I support holding the first comment for review, which may save JH some time in the long run.
Another interesting statistic would be the number of unique commenters, if available. If it is thousands, we likely can’t effectively trade on the discussion. If it is dozens, we can feel part of an educated minority 😉
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