I've closed comments on a few old posts on this blog because, for some reason i can't work out, they've been attracting *huge* amounts of spam (like several spam comments a day). The majority of them are probably ones that no one is likely to want to post a "genuine" comment on anyway (they're either reposts of now-long-gone calls for papers, or my embarrassing ramblings about my emotions at the time), but there are a couple which people might concievably want to comment on if they newly discover them, so, for now, if you find a post you want to comment on, but comments appear to be closed, email me and i'll turn commenting back on for that post.
(I can't think of any other viable way to do it, to be honest: using word verification to prevent spam is inaccessible for people with a lot of impairments, and i don't really want to require moderation for all comments, because it puts me in a position of having to approve every single comment, which i might not be able to do immediately, and as i would like commenters to be able to debate and respond to each other, i'd like comments to appear straight away when people post them. Also, if i disagree with something someone says, i want to debate them publicly, not just delete it (blatant trolls being the only exception, but i haven't really had many of them, with the possible exception of the anonymous person who just repeatedly posted "please tell me where can i buy a unicorn?" as a response to several posts... i can't quite work out if that was an ineffective troll or an even more ineffective spammer...) and moderating comments feels uncomfortably like censorship, which i feel angry enough about at other blogs to feel it would be totally inappropriate to do on mine.)
I have no idea why those particular posts have been attracting spam. There aren't any obvious words in the titles that spammers might be looking for (and some others that do have words, like "sex", that you would expect spammers to look for in their titles haven't attracted anywhere near so much spam), nor do they have many backlinks. (A couple of the "call for papers" ones have email addresses in them, which could be why, but other posts that have been getting it don't.) Any suggestions, please let me know...
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3 comments:
We have the same phenomenon on T&K, there's one post written by a contributor that attracts a lot of porn spam, although there's absolutely nothing in that post that is even remotely about sex.
Instead of closing comments, there are a couple of other options you can try. One is a spam filter like Akismet, and two, you can also moderate comments on older posts only, I think Blogger lets you choose a date. On older posts you're unlikely to interrupt a discussion by moderating comments.
What a coincidence, I've started to have the same problem on my blog.
I had tentatively decided to start moderating comments, though, and just let pretty much any actual comment through. (Like you, I want people with dissenting opinions to feel free to comment! Also, I had resisted moderating comments because I am a) lazy and b) not on the Internet much of the time, so there's potential for a long lag time between a comment being submitted and being approved).
WTF, I got the unicorn comment too! I deleted it of course, but was wondering about what the heck purpose such a comment could even serve as spam. Good to know re. being able to moderate comments on old posts, though, I think I will set my blog parameters to do that as well!
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