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Stopping Comment Spam
Matt Yglesias at Think Progress:
In response to the rather severe outbreak of spambots we’ve been suffering recently, my colleagues of a more technical bent want to try out a new and somewhat draconian measure whereby all comments will be automatically tagged as spam unless the commenter has a previously approved comment. That means that yours truly (and intern Ryan McNeely, as soon as I get around to telling him) will need to spend a fair amount of time this week watching the spam filter and approving legitimate comments. That’ll be a bit of a hassle for a few days, but it should mean that swiftly we’ll be back to a scenario where regulars can comment unimpeded and auto-spam is eliminated.
I've found that this is the only way to do it. I tried banning IP addresses, blacklisting websites, and adding a minimum time between posts. It doesn't stop the spam. It's possible that with a lot more work I could reach the Holy Grail of Spam Blockage - near perfect automated spam filtering - but it's probably not worth the effort considering the number of comments I get. My guess is that it's not worth the effort for 99% of blogs, even if they get up to 50 comments per post.

So now I get an email every time I get a new commenter. There's a slight delay the first time you post. Maybe it slows the conversation a little. I read it and approve it and then you can comment without interruption forever. I used to get a ton of comment spam showing up on my blog. After the switch in comment policy I got a ton of spam showing up in my emails. Now I barely get any.

If you care about your comment section, and want it both free of spam and full of good comments you'll have to approve the comments yourself. That's why you get comment thread cesspools on major news sites. They don't actually give a shit about user feedback. Comments exist as a marketing tactic. "Come visit our site because we care what you think!" They don't. There's no way they can find a worthy comment in those pools of piss and crap. If you want a good comment section you have to maintain it.

What, has Wolf Blitzer not used any of your iReports or something?

Posted at 7/27/2010 8:37:00 PM by Doug


 
[Click for Comment Policy]
New addition to comment policy: first time comments (denoted by your email address) go into moderation so I can get a grip on my yummy spam problem.
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I would never ever display your email address.
promise.
xoxo
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