Blog comments – spam vs. other comments
I do get a number of comments on my personal blog, but no where near as many as I get SPAM comments. In fact at the moment I have over 500 comments caught by the Akismet spam filter in the last two weeks.
Sometimes the SPAM gets through, but then needs to be approved / rejected as the comments are all moderated. Most SPAM that gets that far is then obvious as it normally just repeats words from the original post and includes a link to some website which is the reason they are sending the SPAM to get a link back to their website.
I did have one recently that appears to me to be a sales pitch, but doesn’t look like the usual spam. To give them the benefit of the doubt I’ve approved the comment (as I don’t want to appear to be blocking anyone that disagrees with my opinion), but I am not convinced that this is a genuine testimonial.
For details see: Comment on Saladmaster waterless cookware post
My policy for approving comments to my blog is as follows:
- Automatic spam detection and deletion
- Anything that is obviously spam based on a visual inspection is manually tagged as spam and deleted – such as:
- Links to a website
- Does not provide any new content
- Obviously unrelated to the post
- Anything I consider inappropriate, misleading or unjustified overly-critical is deleted (eg. swearing or non-constructive or personal comments)
- I may remove some text or shorten if required if the comment has valid content
- Anything else is normally approved
- I will normally approve a comment even if it disagrees with my opinion unless one of the above are met
At the end of the day I use my own judgement whether a post is appropriate or not. If it’s not then it doesn’t go on my website. So don’t bother trying to post spam to the blog. The website administrator decision is final.
[Note that the blog on First Aid Quiz and Penguin Tutor Linux News and Tutorials does not list comments directly on the page, but there is a link to the original post complete with comments]