On lots of matters, but this one’s about comments.
I love doing Wordless Wednesday, Scavenger Hunt and the others. I read over 50 blogs daily, and a lot of the best ones are on ‘Blogger’. But;
I Hate Comment Verification - Typing in those stupid random, often unreadble letter combinations.
I comment on blogs that don’t use it far more often than on those that do, and I don’t think I’m alone. Now, I know comment spam is an issue, and I know it can be unpleasant, but what is the scale of the problem on your blog? If you’ve recently been hit by hundreds of spam comments, or perhaps if you’re going away for a few days, then I can understand leaving it on.
But, did you turn it on when you first signed up to Blogger, and have just never turned it off since? If so, you may never have experienced what life is like without it. Here’s my side of things: I recently published some stats on my Blog-Op blog, and the relevant ones are these: In just under 3 months, over 2 blogs I have had over 10,000 visitors, with over 17,000 page views and recieved just over 2000 comments (most belonging to Pinksy 
). Of those, 71 were spam.
Now, those 3% were caught by my spam filter, so you didn’t see them, and I deleted them all by hand, but really that’s a tiny proportion, and no bother at all to delete whilst answering my genuine comments.
So, I would ask my Blogger friends to please turn off their comment verification, as Skittles has asked, and to see how it goes. I bet you get more comments, and not many (if any) will be spam. As an added incentive, if you’re willing to try, leave a comment, and when there’s a few I’ll write a post with your links in it, and urge people to vist AND comment! Thanks.
Entries (RSS)
I have never used it, and only had one or two random spammers, normally this strange scottish bloke called ????
I dont like commenting on sites with it.
Oi! I’m not a sweaty sock, I’m English, though I keep it quiet around here
I do find on days like WW or the photo hunt, that if I don’t get the verification right first go I’ll sometimes move on. It’s stupid, some of them are 5 letters long & really clear, others 8 or 9 and unreadable.
I know the blogger has no control over how hard they are, so it really doesn’t do them any favours.
I have never used it and hate it.
I don’t see the point really..unless you are a huge site being hit by spiders and all that stuff.
I can’t see it stopping malicious posts and that seems to be the most common problem with most ‘personal’ blogs.
I don’t think a lot of people realize what the verification is for in the technical sense.
Some of the verifications make me nuts…the one’s that you THINK you have hit submit and walk away to the next thing and missed the NEXT step to posting the comment.
Not worth the effort.
Ah so did the locals warm to you? It took lets say a while to warm to my sister when she moved up there!
I tend to do the same on WW as well and for some reason the actual letters that your meant to type in don’t show up, so then you have to refresh the page! very annoying!
and then they have comment moderation on as well! so i cant check for spelling mistakes.
I turned my word verification off about a week ago, thanks to your suggestion. My work email gets a ton of spam every day (on the order of 50 spam per 3-4 legitimate messages) but I had no idea that the chance of blog spam was so minimal. Don’t mind using word verification myself, but why have the extra step if it’s not truly necessary?
I hate it too. Thats why I don’t have it. Your welcome.
I didn’t know about the option of turning it off till about two weeks ago. Don’t know if it’s been helpful or not.
I am pretty sure that my blog isn’t getting enough traffic yet to have to worry about verifying comments. I will give it a try and see how it goes. It sounds like a great idea to me too.
For a few months I had two or three spammers hit me per post. It became irritating so I reluctantly turned on the WV. It goes off and on but I think you are right; I noticed less comments when it was turned on.
Great blog!
Thanks everyone, I’ll give you all some linky love out of this
I’ve no objection to people who are getting hit badly turning it on, but as Crunchy points out, most blogs probably get as many nasty comments as they do spam ones, and both sorts are easily deleted…
If you’re worried about spam, come to Wordpress - you guys probably never notice my anti-spam measures but they’re there, and they work.
Claire: I think there’s more English than Scots around here anyway!
Everyone’s really friendly, and it’s been cool.
Of those, 71 were spam.
Wait a minute — how many comments total have I left?
Yes, I think I’ll probably get rid of my homegrown “cutprice spam filter” (IAMREAL) to be honest.
Think it’s in the 70’s Curmudgeon….
I don’t mind yours that much Pinksy, ‘cos its the same every time. But those blogger ones….