Sunday, October 02, 2005

Comment Verification


So... as unpleasant as it already is for many to comment using Blogger's interface, why do I now require comment verification (even as anonymous comments remain enabled)? Because comment spam is becoming a problem.

Which is weird, because any good spammer should know that blogger has implemented "rel=nofollow" tags for comments, so their spam does them no good in the major search engines. And I doubt that their links are so appealing that they generate natural traffic....

2 comments:

  1. Hmmm, this is a very mild form of verification. "Unpleasant" is certainly not a description that springs to mind.

    This measure would prevent comment spam only if the spammish comments are automated. I guess it didn't occur to me that they were. But if they're automated, why don't popular blogs get thousands of them per posting?

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  2. Google has, in my experience, historically done a good job of detecting and automatically deleting automated spam. It seems, however, that a few spammers have found a way around the filters.

    I will grant the possibility that some spammers are posting their spam manually; although word verification can't stop that, it will slow them down.

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