Initially, I activated my blog setting for ‘approving comments before publishing them.’ Considering the spam I was getting from time to time, I felt confident it was the right choice. In fact, at one point my blog was so flooded with spam that I called WordPress on their inability to effectively detect and block the ‘invasion.’ WP responded, and I’ve never experienced the problem to the same extent; these days, spam tends to fluctuate in a ‘normal’ manner—sometimes a few per blog post, sometimes none at all.
In another reality at a later stage, disappointed with the lack of feedback to my posts, I decided to reconsider the setting for ‘approving comments before publishing them.’ I wanted to remove all possible obstacles not only to readers’ ability to comment but to make sure traffic converts to subscriptions. I’m not sorry; since then, my blog traffic has been growing consistently, lively discussions are gracing my posts, and subscription is growing steadily.
“Dear Blogger, unless you have celebrity status or are operating a money-generating blog and your fear of fan raves and rants is valid and/or the odd snarky comment stands a chance of harming your reputation, I suggest you make it easy for me and others to take part in your blog discussion.”
My own experience on other blogs leads me to believe that this is no coincidence, that the perceived need to protect a blog from undesirable comments may have an unfortunate result—people are busy so they have to be selective with their reading, and if they’re confronted by a screening mechanism that blocks them from taking part in a discussion, they might feel frustrated and not return to that particular blog, especially if that mechanism is faulty. My pet peeve is the “prove that you’re not a robot,” which requires you to type the distorted word that’s supplied in a block next to the comment block.
I start getting irritated after I have to sign into my WP account in order to publish under my blog profile and am then confronted by another need to ‘pass the test.’ And maybe it’s my deteriorating eyesight, I don’t know and I don’t care, but if I get that stupid distorted word wrong and am prompted to ‘re-try,’ I…well, I don’t, not anymore. On a few occasions in the past, I’ve alerted the blogger (or guest blogger) to my difficulty to post a comment, and almost every time the response has been, “Sorry; try again later.”
Belinda, we’re in the same camp on the “prove you’re not a robot” issue as well as the word and/or numbers you have to read, maybe again and again. Glad to know someone thinks about this like I do!
Hey Sherrey, it’s not often that I blog out of sheer frustrations, but I had another one of those experiences this morning, so I’m glad to have the sentiment confirmed by others. I’ve now learned the irritating thingee is called Captcha.
Thanks for pitching in
I’m afraid comments are becoming an endangered species. I use the Blogger platform, and I know if I moved to WordPress on my own site, I’d lose most my readers. Furthermore, when I decide to reitre again (which really means choose a new focus, which is likely to happen any year now), Blogger will keep my posts up forever without the need to spend $$$ per year to preserve them. So I stick with Blogger, which has the absolute worst of those nasty “prove you’re not a robot” things.
A couple of months ago I responded to complaints and turned the verification thing off. I get email notifications of every comment which enables me to respond almost instantly with a reply or spam deletion. Suddenly I was getting 100+ email notifications a day. Spam bots were plastering stuff on every one of 500+ posts in my archive. There is no way to turn off notification of certain types of comments, like those Blogger recognizes as spam and sticks in the moderation folder.
After two weeks, I realized I had two choices: a blog with few or no comments or an inbox jammed with constant spam. Word verification is back. For worse or worst.
But in truth, several people have admitted what I also have found: we don’t have time to keep up with all the blogs we follow, and we seldom leave comments anyway, unless something is truly amazing and we actually have something to say. Which is fine. In that case, hopefully we’ll navigate the craziness and say it. So there’s good reason to believe that declining comment count is also an indicator of decreasting motivation and/or readership.
Bottom line, here’s a hint for those times you do feel moved to comply with the bot busters: Hold down Ctrl key and roll the scroll key forward to enlarge the screen image — or hold down Ctrl while pressing the +(=) key. Keep pressing it until you can clearly see the obnoxious words. When you finish, Ctrl/zero will reset the screen zoom to normal. This works for Windows; you Mac folks are on your own, but in general the Cmd key works like Ctrl, so give it a try.
Death to spammers, life to those who do what it takes to leave comments and have compassion for those of us who must rely on the barriers.
The amount of spam you describe is a horrible thought, so I can understand your motivation – really. I always feel so ‘invaded’ after a bout of spam. Yes, damn the bloody spammers!
Oh yuck! WordPress struck again. By default they use the URL for a blog I have not posted to in forever, and sometimes (like just now) I forget to check and enter my REAL blog address: http://heartandcraft.blogspot.com
Oh, damn WP too! Thanks for supplying the link, Sharon. Is this the one I subscribe to and you then responded that it was inactive, or is that another one?
That’s the one.
Agree wholeheartedly with everything you say in your post. Glad that someone pointed out the Captcha problems. More and more, these are deterring me from leaving comments.
Ditto! If I really care about the blogger or article, I’ll point it out to them in the hope that they’ll ‘fix’ it. But I have a better understanding of their dilemma now, thanks to Sharon’s explanation. On a couple of occasions when I’ve taken that kind of trouble, though, I received rather impetuous responses, like “You’ll just have to try again,” instead of “Sorry about the hassle; would you mind trying again?” Of course, lack of manners on top of Captcha will get you nowhere.
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I’ll keep it short because my comments on WordPress sites often get relegated to spam. I don’t like to work excessively to submit a comment and it’s especially frustrating when I make the effort to comment and it ends up as spam. I get very little spam on my Blogger sites.
Well, I had to go fish this one out of spam too – are you sure you didn’t swallow a spam magnet? Just joking…thanks so much for responding, Arlee. I’ve sent a message to Akisimet that you’re not spam…jeez, I think you were one of my first subscribers.
I entered an earlier comment that is probably in spam. I’ll send this under a different blog name just to let you know.
I’m appalled to think that your comment might be sitting in my spam folder. What’s this Akisimet – dramatic irony? I’ll go look for you right away.