Problems with Comment Spam
Vernica laments the prevalence of comment spam on her Manila blog the paper doll chronicles. I, too, have been experiencing an increase in comment spam. The most I received in a day is one about every forty minutes or so. Sometimes when they come in like that, all I can really do is watch them pile up in an e-mail account. It makes me feel so helpless. Cleaning them off a blog does make me weary and wary. When I see a new comment, now instead of looking forward to interacting with a blog reader, I find myself cringing. Will it be a friend or a foe?
Another blogger I saw this evening mentioned the same problem.
Is it possible to completely eliminate comment spam by shutting off comments? On a Manila blog, shutting off comments seems complicated to me because it involves shutting down the discussion group function, not just removing the macro in the template where the comment link is. I’ll be interested to learn if Vernica has success with her endeavor.
Don’t fear: I do not plan to shut down these comments.
October 14th, 2004 at 10:42 am
> I do not plan to shut down these comments.
Well, goodness gracious, I hope not
October 14th, 2004 at 10:44 am
> I do not plan to shut down these comments.
Well, goodness gracious, I hope not
October 15th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
I am sad to report that my attempt at thwarting the spammers is not working, j. It is puzzling because I took very drastic measures — not only removing the comments macro but also closing posting to the discussion group. I also went through my membership list and deleted all of the spammers. And, yet, this morning there was more spam — and it was on my post about being upset about comment spam. Grrrr…
I am really stumped since when I attempted to comment in my discussion group using my non-editorial login, I could not. How could a random spammer gain editorial access to my blog? I am very confused and annoyed. If I go through one more week of this, I will lock my blog and delete everything. Maintaining a weblog is not worth this kind of irritation.
I am glad that you are much more patient than I am
October 15th, 2004 at 5:12 pm
It’s my understanding that spammers aren’t coming through the regular comment links and discussion groups on these Manila blogs, which is why I don’t think removing comments and closing off the discussion group will work to prevent comment spam. I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I think I learned that the big spammers run some kind of program or spider against the backend of the blog and just stick random comments wherever they can.
Of course, there are some comment spammers who do spam blogs manually.
I wonder if someone at a Thursday night meeting can explain how it all works.