I was catching up on some blog post reading yesterday and ran across a post on JohnCow.com about a method for killing spam on a blog. The gist of it was using a new feature in WordPress that allows you to automatically close comments on articles older than xx days. You can set the number of days to whatever value you deem best for your blog. In the Cow’s case, he set it to 15 days. The result? He dropped down what he sees as comment spam from 15,000 to less than 100 inside 2 months.
A couple of questions popped into my head at that point. First, what about the valid comments that get tagged as spam? Sure it’s going to be a low percentage, but you’re still leaving good comments on the table. For me, I try and run through the comments deemed spam by Akismet every day just to make sure I catch the ones that are from valid people. Maybe this isn’t realistic on a blog like the Cow’s with the amount of traffic, comments and resulting spam comments he gets.
More importantly, though, in shutting down the ability to comment on older blog posts, what about the discussions on topics that can last for months or even years? There have been plenty of times I’ve gone back to a blog post that is a year or two (or more) old and read comment threads. I find lots of value in these old threads. Why shut down that opportunity, especially on a learning blog and even more so on a blog that exists to get indexed and sell people crap/make money online.
I’d be curious to hear how his comment closing “trick” affected his comments overall. That would be the real key. No mention of that on his blog.
It raises an interesting, and ultimately personal question. Would you rather deal with the comment spam and have as many comments as possible (the boat most of us are in I bet), or save some headache of hitting the Delete All Spam button once in a while to clear out Akismet and deal with the resulting lower comment count? I personally am not a fan of limiting the posts people can comment on. In fact, I view the comment spam as a nice gauge of a blog’s popularity. The more popular a blog is, the more comment spam you should be picking up.
What does everyone here think?
October 27th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Interesting post. Spam is a royal pain in the ass because ti wastes such a huge amount of time for everyone who is affected by it. The philosophical issue that I see with spam is that one persons spam is another persons legit content. I think that as long as blog comments contribute to search rankings you will get all types of comment spam taking place. Some will be automated and malicious. Others will be much more benign. I prefer to engage in the dialogue of a site where the communication is genuine and sincere.
Although this is very rare and difficult to accomplish it does pose the deeper question which you addressed in your post: "How Do You Define Quality?"
October 27th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Ryan, I will never follow such a method to keep away the real comments. The best method to keep the spammers away is by having the href count. If you are getting more than 2 links in a comment then it is more likely to say a spam. If you can build in this feature or find some plugin who does this then you can keep off lots of spammers from your site.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
You're right, this is an interesting personal dilemma. I think that until your spam gets completely out of control to the extent that it does with a high traffic blog like the Cow's, it's worth leaving comments open and taking the extra few minutes to try to separate the real spam from the false positives. But eventually, it's just not worth your time if you have to browse through 300 spam comments a day just in case a legitimate comment made it through. I hate to say it but we all have a threshold. Once you have enough good discussion going on each post, you may not feel as strongly about accidentally leaving out a legitimate comment as collateral in the war on spam. -Rob
October 28th, 2009 at 12:29 am
I would just rather delete the spam then close off my comments. I get a lot of really good comments on older posts and I don't want to take this away from the user engagement of my site
October 28th, 2009 at 3:13 am
When humans comment on your blog they have read the post and leave a comment. This of course leaves the referal from your blog. One easy way to block spammers is to check for the referal. Simply paste the lines below into your .htaccess file in the root of your webserver.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*shoemoney.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://whereyouwanttosendthem.com/$ [R=301,L]
October 28th, 2009 at 6:34 am
How many days to close comments on articles?
Coz I wanna do that also to mine.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I don't think that comment will always be spamming. Some people are making genuine comment like me!
October 28th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Spam, particularly of the Russian variety is the single most important catch for Akismet. Unfortunately, one has to go through the caught comments to release the genuine ones that also get caught.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I too follow your method of manually going through all the spam to isolate the odd genuine one and there is nothing else that one can do. Some one like John Cow has to use the closing off of comments as his traffic in any case is very high. I hope to reach there some day, but for the moment, I am quite comfortable doing the way I am.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Spammers are not just annoying but they killing the reputation of the website as well. Hope sooner some could discover on how to prevent spamming.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Yeah, not a big fan of the spam plugins, I'd rather weed it out myself and keeo a natural organic blog instead of a polished one free of spam.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:35 am
Not a huge fan of the wordpress spam plugins. I'd rather keep the blog natural and organic…it's true, spam does kinda show you how much reach your site has so its a positive in that sense.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
You can choose from WP settings which gives a number of options.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Spammers are creating problems for the webmasters and as well as disturbing the whole Internet Structure. Some remedial measures required in this context in order to avoid such situation. THanks for sharing
October 29th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Spamming is a very bed habit.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Nice blog………
October 30th, 2009 at 6:21 am
I wouldn't use a plugin to filter spam because it may create problems for legitimate posters. I have a blog on my store's website and I just moderate the first comment a person makes and then if they are approved they can comment without restriction from then on…seems to work reasonably well.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Spamming is not that good way to creat some lucrative things for the site. But in fact one should make some genuine comments so that communication becomes powerful and some ideas can be also shared.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
My spamfree plugin seems to do the trick. I find it blocks most of the junk although I don't get a massive amount of comments. I think the ideas of turning off comments is alright depending on how often you post new content.
November 1st, 2009 at 1:17 am
So it'll be only yours decision cause it's for you to decide – if new comments and new people will come to read and comment your blog!
A great piece of them are not spammers!
November 1st, 2009 at 9:09 am
I think that its much better to have some comments and some spam as well, because you can approve comments which are there… If there are no comments then you cant approve anything
So i guess its better to have some comments than not to have… On my blog i regularly receive spam but i just see them and mark them as spam… This is perfectly fine by me, but hmm when i think of bigger blogs i do not know if filtering spam manually can be a big hassle =
But anyways i would still prefer comments and spam
November 1st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Some of my blogs get huge amounts of spam. Installing some sort of captcha can really help mitigate the problem.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
Spam is a difficulty however I wonder if Crow's soulution isent a little blunt. He does have a huge amount of spam and many of us would take this hard hearted step although deleting comments of 30 days or older. Unfortunately there as yet no substitute for a personal review of spam to identify those comments which have been wrongly classified. ISP need to develop a solution which identifies possible spam and deal with them rather than trying to deal with the spam.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
Spammer are really getting benefit from making lots of comment but there is an utility for blog owner to protect spammer by NO Follow it!
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I think it's highly dependent on the amount of comments your blog receives and if it's too time comsuming you can always hire an virtual assistant to do it for you.
Personally I do it manually myself even though I have two interns who could do it for me.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Interesting debate. I have the same issue in that I try my best to parse through the spam comments, but it can often be a daunting task. I wonder if there is a feature on the plugin that allows you to exclude certain articles? A few blog articles in which I don't think I would ever want to close commenting.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
You do raise a very interesting questions. It is almost similar to asking a webmaster if he would like any type of traffic to their website or targeted traffic?
In today's marketing strategies, unfortunately we do have to deal with spams. How we deal with it separates us from great sites to regular sites.
Do I want to come to your site to read your posts and see what people have to say about it? Sure, if I can find interesting posts and interesting points of views in the comments section, and not just any spammy comment.
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I don't agree with closing old posts from comments either. Blogs are supposed to be an ongoing open conversation. By only allowing comments on new posts, you are shutting out new readers who may have just found your blog via an old post.
November 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I also tortured spam, I do not know what to do
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:44 am
i think setting older post for comment review is the best approach closing it, especially for casual reader makes them unable to comment when they found it. some old post have value some times after the post is done especially for pre trends idea. some blog and web site i have seen in 2001-2004 about the mortgage questionable behavior are probably the place where reference and comments should have been place last year with reason. blocking it completely is not good. review is sometimes the only options, many use old post to get unotice and make very big mess.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:18 am
But eventually, it's just not worth your time if you have to browse through 300 spam comments a day just in case a legitimate comment made it through. I hate to say it but we all have a threshold. Once you have enough good discussion going on each post, you may not feel as strongly about accidentally leaving out a legitimate comment as collateral in the war on spam.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
Do I want to come to your site to read your posts and see what people have to say about it? Sure, if I can find interesting posts and interesting points of views in the comments section, and not just any spammy comment.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am
I guess yes, most comments should be stopped after a certain time as their relevancy drops in some cases. But also, what constitutes spam? Is it just people with names relating to their businesses (like mine), those who just write "thanks" or is it those who are just posting links without even considering the relevancy to their anchor text etc? I think, close blogs off! Start a new one if a particular topic needs to be discussed further!
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
This is an interesting observation. Search engines do give links to old blog posts and new readers come to the blog site through such links. Some of them tend to stay on as regular visitors.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I think that sometimes there is no other way. Like You said: You can close comments or deal with spam. It is so huge movement that it is almost unavoidable (I don't know how to avoid it, but someone maybe knows that secret). For myself I always think that even spammy comment is better than no comments at all. Sometimes you can remove those spammy comments manually but surely some of them could pass.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Most of my sites are behind a registration wall, and I use proxy detection, etc. to trap most spammers then. The few that get through are purged along with all of their spammyness.
If you are going to set a closing time on blog posts, you should place the limit on the last comment, rather than the post itself.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Do I want to come to your site to read your posts and see what people have to say about it? Sure, if I can find interesting posts and interesting points of views in the comments section, and not just any spammy comment.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:29 am
But eventually, it's just not worth your time if you have to browse through 300 spam comments a day just in case a legitimate comment made it through. I hate to say it but we all have a threshold.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:30 am
I just moderate the first comment a person makes and then if they are approved they can comment
November 5th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I think the main feature of spam comment is that it is not niche to the post content or doesn't make any sense. It may have some grammatical errors & spelling mistakes also. Such comments are really bad for a site or blog.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I don't think just deleting old comments will solve the spam problem. There could be discussions that are interesting to read even after some time. So, spending a little time to check the comments goes a long way.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:10 am
I think this is the problem of every blogger. Rarely there would be any blog who l have not spam comment. Some people comment on site only for short period, when they got link love then leave visiting and there are many comment which is not related with the topic of post. I think Akismet is best choise for resolving that.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I am so curious to know the comment closing “trick” affected comments overall. That would be the real key. Well thanks for the tips.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Hi
If you write about the post than the comment will not be spam.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I have just been hit with some fifty seven Russian and nonsense comments on some of my older blogs. It took me about an hour to go through the whole lot and allow the genuine ones and spam the rest. The Russian spammers seem to be playing havoc recently.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:10 am
A fact the more popular a blog is, the more comment spam you should be picking up. WordPress's new feature that allows us to automatically close comments on articles older than some specific days.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:12 am
Have you enabled Akismet under plugins. It is usually installed by default but you just have to enable it.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:51 am
I don't mind email spam that much, cause my spamfilter takes care of most of that. The mindless 'buy viagra' spam on my blogs pisses me off though. I think if you want to promote your website via commenting, that's great. Just take the time to write a relevant comment (as I'm doing right now!)
November 11th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I think that spamming is horrible, but some people actually are leaving a real comment and they just add there website in it for their link. I think website owners think that if they see a comment with link then it is garbage, but that is not the case at all.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am
I haven't heard of this site but if you can do this then report the spammers and also write a message on your website saying that any spammers will be reported. That should scare them off.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Great post, I would say that if the comments on a blog or a forum is relevant to the discussion, I don't mind about spam!
November 24th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I agre with hgh2 , i use capcha plugin , seems to work ok, also I disallow all comments that have any links in them. My sites are all do follow, but I no longer allow keyword links, only the names or initials of the commenter as this opens the flood gates for spam.
Jon cow uses his mailing list for traffic and so doesnot need google for traffic, unlike the rest of us.
I also found that when the posts are relegated to the archive they do not recieve se traffic , I htink this is to do with the sitemap xml plugin , but I make sure all posts are linked from the home page in a menu, obviously the more posts you have access to the more keywords you can get from google.
Emms
December 11th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I feel its better to allow every one to add comment.It improves traffic.which helps in gaining good alexa rank.
I am maintaining a site related to health.It is completely filled with comments from last 15 days.But the great thing is that my page impressions got improved a lot when compared to last month
December 29th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Both are in the same stand…,Closing the old posts,this will reduce the page rank as the number of posts reduces…
January 25th, 2010 at 12:14 am
I can understand the balance that larger blogs may need to strike between comments and spam. For more popular blogs, the % of comments made within the first 3-4 days is probably very high from their regular users. For less-traficked blogs, the % of comments made 15+ days after the post is probably a bit higher due to SE pickup, or new readers finding content and wanting to contribute. If you have other means of managing true spam within the site, I think it reflects the true nature of blogs to leave comments open.
January 30th, 2010 at 8:28 am
If you are going to set a closing time on blog posts (whether it is an erotica blog, a sexual roleplaying blog, SEO blog, etc.) you are better off using a blacklisting system of some kind (e.g. how Habari handles it) that actually filters out the spam rather than just narrowing the window of opportunity.
January 30th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I don't agree with shutting down your comments facility either. I am the same as you, very often I will go searching in google and the old threads will come up first as they have had more chance to circulate the internet. If I have a question to ask the blog poster and i can not give my two penneth then it is annoying.
Better to sift through the spam or just make your blog no follow.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
It is very relative what is and what is not spam. I think that a simple opinion is not spam. Perhaps the 90% of all comments are very simple, yes, but not all spam. It is very difficult to have in a blog, forum or whatever a 100% good quality comments.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I think if the comment has a good insight about your topic why not to keep them.. it gives a relevancy of your topic and a quality on it.
but if the comments have no sense at all you can delete it.
March 29th, 2010 at 7:05 am
So.. how come you didn't close this post for comments then?
March 29th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Why would I close this post for comments? I personally don't think closing ANY post for comments, unless you have a particular reason in mind for a specific post, is a good idea. Some of the most popular posts on this blog are some of the older ones. Why shut down discussion just b/c something is more than a month old?
April 6th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
I’m in the view if you get thousand and above comments in you dashboard everday and you gonna site around the next few hours deleting spam maybe closing the spam after certain day would help reduces some spam comments.
It would be good too, if that plugin allow you to close manually on post which you don’t want anymore comments.
I would say I like plugin that allow me flexibility, as for now I welcome as much comment as possible.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:22 am
You're right, this is an interesting personal dilemma.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:22 am
Do I want to come to your site to read your posts and see what people have to say about it? Sure, if I can find interesting posts and interesting points of views in the comments section, and not just any spammy comment.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:28 am
I don't agree with closing old posts from comments either. Blogs are supposed to be an ongoing open conversation. By only allowing comments on new posts, you are shutting out new readers who may have just found your blog via an old post
May 18th, 2010 at 1:55 am
it depends on you..
but open conversation is a good thing to make people overview the blog post and make such more sensible comments.
if more sensible comments more people read a lot of what other's insight. and if you can help the author of the blog as well as your site if you leave a very interesting comment.
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June 18th, 2010 at 2:41 am
Thanks for your article!
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May 18th, 2011 at 9:13 pm
You have a good point of view about Comments & Spam vs. No Comments & Low Spam. Nice article!