Sunday, January 12, 2020

Comments on a Blog

It is getting harder to monitor anonymous comments on blog posts.  When they praise me for my insight, excellent writing or want to offer advice on how I can get more people to my "wonderful" blog...all written in broken English...that makes it easy to recognize the commenter as nefarious.  I mark it as spam and delete it.  I am not a super popular blog, so I wonder how those who get many dozens of comments handle it all?

I got this anonymous comment yesterday, on a really old post, below:

"Tabor, thank you for correcting me.  I should not be commenting at 5:30 in the morning. My daughter is always telling me to PROOF READ."  This was followed by a link to some furnace ad!  (Furnace Calgary Prices Calgary)

This was an older post written after my first trip to Calgary Canada and I guess the business model is to search blogs for city names?

I do allow unmonitored comments for the first week only after a new post.  This usually means only one deletion.  After that comments are held for moderation by me.  That seems to allow me to screen most of the "scrap" from the real thing.





22 comments:

  1. I do get occasional spam comments, and I instantly delete them and mark them as spam. Funny, lately I seem to be getting fewer of these nuisance comments. :-)

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  2. I get one advertising brothels periodically. Spam indeed.

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  3. It's funny how interconnected we are now and what might trigger some kind of spam. We hear the phrase "We're all in this together", and I guess it's more true than we realize, or perhaps desire. :-/

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  4. I too get occasional spam... but either delete or report spam when I check the 'under moderation' area. But I don't seem to get a lot.

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  5. I warn at the top of my blog that I will delete any comments with links as how do I know where they go without going there and not doing that. I also allow it unmonitored but cannot be anonymous for the first few days-- then I hold them. We've even gotten some threatening ones on ours. I try not to use titles or labels that will bring that to me-- especially for my little 'political' one.

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    Replies
    1. I think the warnings are not useful as these are done by bots.

      Delete
    2. I agree but I have it up there to welcome comments and a bit about the blog. Then when I delete them, I don't feel guilty ;). I've had times with more and times, like now, without many. Not sure what makes the difference.

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  6. not just anonymous spam but ones with a 'name' attached. most comments come to my email and come in the middle of the night so if I get one first thing I do is go to the dashboard and mark it as spam and delete. I had one bot determined to comment on one of my older posts but I was on-line and caught it right away and deleted. within a couple of minutes it was back. this happened 3 or 4 times in a row until it gave up.

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  7. Like you, posts older than a week, i have to approve the comment. A couple of times a week i get a spam that comes through. How some people moderate every comment i do not know.

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  8. Guess we all have the problem. But it's not as bad as those #*&**$## robocalls on our phones!

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  9. I get very few comments like this and find them very easy to delete after the fact. I can't imagine having to moderate every comment, but your one-week solution seems viable.

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  10. I had to turn on moderate comments because i started getting so many
    on all different posts. By moderating you can catch them where ever they comment. BY THE WAY you have a few dodgy comments on this post.

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    Replies
    1. YES. Just noticed this morning! I will delete ow

      Delete
  11. I started getting so much spam of a sexual nature that I had to go to comment moderation recently. The spam comments really put me off blogging for a while.

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  12. I recently got so many in another language!! I had to switch to comment moderation - frustrating that people have to continuously find short-cuts at others expense.

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  13. I also monitor all comments. Plus, I don't post comments from new IDs, advertising anything, and whatever doesn't sound right. That rarely happens though.

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  14. My inactive blog, Just Curious, still gets SPAM, but infrequently.
    Good post. I'm always open to hear about the technical side of blogging.

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  15. I get more spam than I want and finally just moderate all comments which I don’t find difficult to handle at all, but then I don’t get a lot of comments. I think moderation may discourage some commenters or those who desire active dialogue with the Blogger and others who comment. I really dislike the sneaky spammers who tack in foreign language symbols. I’ve not tried to translate them, but the rest of the comment shows they haven’t really even read the blog post so I just send off to spam.

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  16. I have tried to beef up my spam-catching blog plug-ins, and managed finally to reduce the horrid, anti-social crap down to almost nothing. Then, about as soon as I began congratulating myself, I noticed that your comment to my last post landed in spam jail.

    So back to the drawing board...

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  17. I seem to manage, though the thought occurs, probably because I am boring on my blog! American and Japanese ones are the only ones I pick up, get more upset about ordering online and then having that particular firm chase me through several websites I go to. Are those called 'botts'?

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  18. I’m using comment moderation these days too. Spam was really annoying!

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