Comments on: Blog Comments Closed Due to Lack of Common Sense

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:37:57 +0000

If you use wordpress, use a plugin like Akismet. It won’t catch everything, but it does catch a lot. I’m sure other blog platforms have their own spam-filtering plugins.

By: All In One Forum

All In One Forum — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:26:39 +0000

I have seen people spamming my site too. What can we do to stop this other than the above?

By: Jason A. Martin

Jason A. Martin — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:33:12 +0000

Unfortunately, closed comments are a byproduct of spammers. In a perfect world, blog owners wouldn’t need to worry about comments that are completely off, such as the pharma-product post on a blog about car parts.

And not everyone cares about comments. Many blogs are put in existence just to disseminate information or to “catch clicks” for affiliate programs.

Professional blogs, like this one, should always use the comment feature. You want feedback.

What blog owner doesn’t like seeing a friendly and relevant blog comment? 🙂

By: Jenn

Jenn — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:52:50 +0000

I can understand some uses for password-protecting posts. I actually saw it used in an interesting way today: you had to sign up for a site’s newsletter to get a free report. When you did that, the thank you page took you to a link to a post, and they gave you the password. From the password-protected page you could download the file. It’s not really that much protection (anyone can pass along the post link and password to bypass the newsletter signup), so it wouldn’t be good for paid products. But it was a bit clever for a free report.

Keep in mind too that not everyone uses blogs professionally. There are a lot of kids and teens blogging, and protected posts and blogs can be a really good thing in protecting the privacy of those groups, without them being condemned to a life of no more than Myspace or LiveJournal blogging. 😉

By: costa

costa — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:33:11 +0000

I am as baffled as you. Closing comments beats all purpose of ones posts, unless of course it is one very sensitive issue and the author does not want things to go out of hand.

Another thing that I am baffled is to password protect a post. I mean, why publish it in the first place if it is so secretive and not for public consumption. If they just want to share it with their closest friends, why not just email it instead.

Maybe I am just a real busybody who likes to know everything. 🙂

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:24:02 +0000

Thanks for the comments Kevin. I guess I just have a really difficult time accepting the spam excuse from bloggers, because it’s extremely easy to counteract. I get hundreds of spam comments a day on my blogs collectively, and the solutions work well enough that I only have to deal with the new spammers once.

I use Worpress. I’d recommend it to anyone. I have it set to always require approval for someone’s first comment on the site. It keeps spammers off, and once someone shows they’re a legitimate poster, they don’t have to wait in the future and it cuts down on my approval lists in the future.

I also have a plugin installed which catches a good bit of the spam, even if not all. When I get a more clever spammer, I can blacklist them the first time I see their posts, and they won’t be much of a problem again.

So I don’t have to make people register for the site, or anything “extra” that takes their time. When a solution exists, a responsible blogger is going to use it if spam is that much of a concern rather than inconveniencing potential commenters from using the blog as it’s intended.

By: Kevin Dugan

Kevin Dugan — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 06:52:44 +0000

Closing comments tells me the person does not want to have a conversation…the whole reason they call it social media. Those folks are writing web sites.

The registration is a pain, but it might be to limit comment spam. I just cleaned out 100 comments from one person dying to tell me about their site. And I use Typepad Captcha which is supposedly an effective middle ground to all of this. It’s not.

Has site registration stopped me from commenting, yes. But I think blog spam is a bigger factor over paranoia of being protective.

A third phenom is how the blog owner approves the comments first. I do this on my blogger site. But I always run the comment unless it is spam or more about trashing me vs. talking about my post. It’s an easy option offered by blogger and it does not require site registration to comment at the site so I use it.

My two cents.