Comments on: How Many Layers Are Necessary to Protect Against Comment Spam?

By: ray

ray — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:12:17 +0000

Ilker, after looking at the screenshot, I think I might just check that out. It looks simple and straightforward and also will allow me to follow the conversations that don’t have email follow-ups available. Thanks for pointing out the benefits.

By: ilker

ilker — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:58:01 +0000

Hmmm, I don't know.. For me it's a great tool. I don't have to check out all the blogs that I commented on and it only shows me when a new comment is there. All I have to do is to click the bookmark "Track comments" when I'm on a post that I like to follow the comments and its all aggregated in one page I check daily.. it's like an email account only for comments. The good thing is that it's all made in AJAX, so I don't have to click unsubscribe to go to another page, then click confirm to unsubscribe and then get a page that says "you successfully unsubscribed." It also allows you to get all the comments in a single feed if RSS is your thing. Here is a screenshot to illustrate my point. Don't get me wrong.. I'm not paid to advertise these guys (I think Cocoment does the same thing) but I too hesitated to use it in the first place and later found it really useful. It now makes my life a lot easier. I even made a post about it

By: HART (1-800-HART)

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:14:59 +0000

You know .. you subscribe to any of my sites and/or I see your face in myBlogLog widget in the sidebar periodically .. that is nice too .. because I’ve been setting my feeds to full-feed, and if people actually coming to visit, there must be some reason (hopefully to surf!)

But, way to go’s are cool too!

By: ray

ray — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:06:28 +0000

Yep. I was afraid that the bots would get smarter. It’s really inevitable, I suppose. I was just hoping to reduce the load on my site a little bit by blocking some of the spam at the door. I’m not sure if this is much of a concern, though. Like you, I’m not checking the comments blocked by Aksimet as much now because I just don’t have the time. Sometimes, I’ll delete them without even looking.

I do read every legitimate comment here and try to respond to each and every one. I also try to check out the blog or website of each commenter, too. I think that probably shows!

Maybe a comments policy would be the best place for that information, HART. I’ve been thinking about adding one here. My link threshold is much lower than yours, though.

P.S. I’ll have to comment more on your blogs so you don’t feel so lonely… I hope you don’t mind a few “way to go, dudes!”

By: HART (1-800-HART)

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:45:42 +0000

oh #2 .. I also tried co.comments .. >> hated it. I don’t want all my comments in one location. Like you, Ray .. it’s easy to just click on a column in my email folder and sort all incoming emails by date, by blog and browse the conversations – without even dropping by!

By: HART (1-800-HART)

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:43:36 +0000

There is also the custom query plugin where you ask a question, like “what color are the yellow pages” etc .. I tried that and it seemed to work – but only if you change the custom word after a while, because after a while bots and scripts will answer yellow (translation: I removed it after about 2 weeks)

Honestly, I don’t even check my moderated comments or akisment or spam karma 2 comments in moderation. But – I did change in the options the number of links a reader can add to a comment before it’s automatically moderated. I figure that usually when I start linking in comments, there could be anywhere up to 6 links! So – I set it at that. If there’s 7 – you are out of luck. And, I just let the akismet/spam killer sort out the viagra-comments and links provided.

oh – the only thing I’m lacking – I should probably add that bit of info to my ABOUT page or something so people at least know. but, I’m fortunate – nobody wants to comment on my blogs so, not many people get offended.

By: ray

ray — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:29:34 +0000

Hi Marios. That would be a pain to have to re-type everything. The plugin that I’m considering actually is supposed to do away with that problem if I’m not mistaken, though. It seems like a small inconvenience in order to block a large number of the spam comments I receive. Of course, I don’t want to discourage anyone from commenting, so would you say having to put in the math answer would make you less likely to comment?

Would anyone else be less likely to comment if I use the math plugin here?

By: ray

ray — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:24:25 +0000

Hey HART, I didn’t even think about the emails. That would really suck because I would be getting those, too. They wouldn’t even be marked as spam by my email server because they would be coming from this blog!

Ilker, I’ll have to check out co.mments. I’ve seen the name pop up a bunch of times on other blogs. I actually like the email follow-ups on blogs I’ve commented on, though. I have to say I quickly lose track of all of the places I’ve commented and the emails make it quick and easy for me to stay in the loop. It’s usually very easy to unsubscribe, too.

By: ilker

ilker — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:05:22 +0000

@HART: Hehe.. well no I’m not reading your comment from my email account because I never use the “notify me via email” feature on any blog. I find tracking comments to be a second priority and I don’t like them to show up in between my important emails.

In case you didn’t know, there is a free service called co.mments that allows you to follow all the posts you want in one page. I think it is great and lets me stay on top of the conversation (of interesting blogs/posts) without disturbing my work.

So yeah, that is why I didn’t understand the big fuss about comment spam. Thanks for enlightening me though!

By: HART (1-800-HART)

HART (1-800-HART) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:18:54 +0000

Ilker .. You probably might be reading this in your email account, if you ticked the bottom box to “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” .. Which, is a great invention because you (nor anybody else) has to come back here unless you want to and you know that someone added to your comments.

Now – imagine this blog without Akismet spam, and you received (what did ray say..) 297 emails since last night?

I think it’s more annoying to the subscribers, than the blog owner – but, it affects the blog owner if the subscribers are annoyed. If you don’t have comment spam plugins, you should remove the Followup box i.m.o.