Wednesday 22 December 2010
Blogging Annoyances
One of the best pieces of advice given to me blogging wise, was from Jeff Bell aka Stonch. "Forget all that moderation and password stuff. You won't get enough spam or nutcases to make it worthwhile and people don't like it." He was right.*
It is annoying enough to have to re-record infeasibly long and indistinct word verification when you comment, but then up pops "Your comment will be published after blog owner approval." WTF?
If it is you (and you know who you are and there are quite a few of you) please let me know why on earth you do it? It's bad enough doing the former, but then more hoops to jump through? Why? Is it a power thing? I get the odd bit of spam, but I just delete it. Simples. Best of all, just stop it. It is pointless and irritating.
*It's a paraphrase, but that's the gist of it.
I agree
ReplyDeletethats annoying too!
ReplyDeletefeel free to delete one
mine says approval but mainly as smap prevention, im quite happy for people to air their views in the comments!
ReplyDeleteI used to have no approvals but then I used to get dozens and dozens of comment SPAM a day and deleting them got really old, really quickly.
ReplyDeleteNow that I have a smartphone, I'm pretty good at approving legitimate comments pretty quickly.
I turned word verification on because I was getting a lot of spam, sometimes ten a day – it's now totally dried up.
ReplyDeleteword verification turned itself on, on my rubbish. I think it is a default. I eventually figured out how to turn it off when I was pissing around with settings and colours and layout.
ReplyDeleteI think it varies dependent on what hosting software you have. Blogger's in-built spam detection is pretty good, but what I've found is very effective is to turn on moderation for old posts.
ReplyDeleteI just don't seem to get that much spam that escapes the spam filter on blogger. Two or three a week tops and because they tend to be on old posts, they are picked up by the Tyson method outlined by him. They tend to come overnight so two seconds work in the morning sees them off.
ReplyDeleteNo-one's explained blog owner approval yet.
I use wordpress - i clear about 30 spam posts a day from both my junk email folder and wordpress as well.
ReplyDeleteFair number of those contain links to sites i wouldn't want my readers clicking on to by accident.
I get the impression Wordpress is more prone to spam?
ReplyDeleteI use blogger approval after getting comments of abuse from some troll bloggers. Personally I don't want to look at my blog to see someone calling me abusive names, yes it takes seconds to delete them but on the moderation page you only see half a sentence rather than the whole lot.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that I haven't had any in the last couple of months so I may consider changing it in the New Year.
I have word verification, but I switched it off a month or two ago, as I'd had no spam for around 6 months. I then got 10 items of spam in 2 days, so on it went again. I've had none since. It will stay on.
ReplyDeleteI can see Meer's problem: women bloggers can be subject to aggressive sexist abuse (Impy Malting had the same problem) and moderation is the best way they can deal with it.
Stonch was wrong ~ not for the first time.
I would say receiving abusive comments (as opposed to general penis-enlargement type spam) would be the key reason for turning comment moderation on. There is a little coterie of so-called beer bloggers who do have a tendency that way.
ReplyDeleteReasonable point RedNev. If that's why I'm fine with it. I don't tend to get much abuse, at least not much I wouldn't be prepared to print.
ReplyDeleteI guess if I got a lot of spam or personal abuse (though I have had a hate campaign) I might be inclined to switch it on too.
Too bloody right!
ReplyDeleteI don't have any on mine (I don't think so anyway) and don't get spam. The spam I do get is generally caught by blogger anyway!! I've almost left blogs after hitting comment only to see, just before I close the window, that I then need to add a silly word in.
I completely agree about the double filter and then approval. WTF indeed.
I only applied the comment moderation after I kept getting spam. That all seems to have stopped now, so I will probably remove it come the New Year.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, in the early TIW days I got loads of comments from a nutter who wanted me to send him photographs of my feet. My size-10 horrible Yorkshire feet. Honestly. I'm not making this up. So that's why I moderate. He's not been in touch for ages, so I might well review the moderation option.
ReplyDeleteWordpress + Askimet = Spam free heaven. Luddites! ;-)
ReplyDeletePeter, one thing to be wary of though, libel law. You may be liable for anything that anyone chooses to comment on your blog. So thanks to the red tape brigade in this country perhaps comment moderation is recommended...
ReplyDeleteMark - I am well aware of libel laws and if I thought anything went too far in that direction it would be deleted.
ReplyDeleteMight make that bread again today, this time with extra strong Canadian flour. Maybe a different beer too.
Hello brewers, that this Christmas will bring much happiness to all and many beers ...
ReplyDeleteHappy Christmas ...........
http://grandecervejeiro.blogspot.com/
To be honest I'm not quite sure why I selected moderation when I set this blog up.
ReplyDeleteI've remove it and the word verification too tonight cos of you!
Happy Spamming Christmas...
I've turned mine off too. We'll see what happens.
ReplyDeleteI have approval turned on for commenters who have never commented before, in part to pick up the very small amount of spam that gets through Wordpress and Akismet (which is a pretty efficient combination) and in part because it's an easy way of flagging up new commentators. The most irritating part of "blog owner approval" for me is finding that my reply has been made less relevant by someone else who was higher up the "still waiting for approval" chain than me. The comment setting that really annoys me is the one that won't allow Name/URL as an identity choice (Name/URL allows me to fill in my name and url with two keystrokes and two mouseclicks).
ReplyDelete