Friday 30 November 2012

Return to Captcha

Sadly, after a brief flirtation with free love, I've returned the Captcha comment verification to the blog. There were not too many spam comments to start with, but they have mushroomed over the last week and far more were getting through Blogger's spam filter. I don't have time to be deleting crud from the comments all the time. Interestingly, the post that attracts by far the most spam is PLR =/= income tax (a curmudgeonly rant) presumably because PLR and income tax and search-magnets.

Scanning the spam, though, I did wonder about some of the comments. Why is the word 'fastidious' so common in them? Who ever follows those links anyway? But who in particular is going to follow a link if the comment starts off 'most of the people who comment here appear brain dead' or 'I was hoping to find something interesting here, not a lot of complaining about a problem you could do something about if you would just stop complaining'? (The latter might be appropriate to one or two of my rants, but it wasn't appropriate to the cheerful post it was attached to.)

Spam-mongers are, I suppose, the cold-callers of the blogosphere. But if I were a robot, I'd go and look for a job building car bodies or something instead of leaving comments on random blogs. (Yes, I do know it's a different type of robot. Joke. Don't flood me with comments about bots/robots and software/hardware. Especially not spam comments.)

And finally... the hits on the blog have rocketed up with captcha turned off. I suspect this means the bots are hunting out blogs without verification. So if any of you wants just numbers of hits, so that you can brag to a publisher that your blog gets 10,000 hits a month, or whatever, just turn off captcha and wait a few weeks. And if you're a publisher, and some prospective writer tells you their blog gets 10,000 hits a month, just pop along there and see if comment verification is turned on. If not, lots of those hits are from bots that won't buy a book.

So I'm very sorry about the return to the stupid letter/number reading and I know they are very hard to do. But please carry on leaving comments. As the other bots say: your comment is valuable to us so please continue to hold.

16 comments:

  1. I'm just about hanging in there without the Captcha thingy - one post attracted hundreds of spammers (with photos of my trip to Nepal - I still can't spot the magic word that brought them there) - but blogger catches most of them, and they seem to run along the lines of 'I love your blog, please come to my site to buy ...'.

    Apart from that one post, I seem to have been lucky, and don't have many random visits. (Yet ...)

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  2. Ah, that's good to hear, Jo. As some of my spam was abusive, I felt I had to so something about it. Long may your blog remain spam-free. (Sounds like some 21st century blessing!)

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  3. My spam tends to start with,"I really love your blog,great post..." but are clearly unconnected with the post. I have turned on the moderation which also cuts down on the spam. At least the comment isn't posted. I haven't had a lot of spam since I turned off the Anonymous option, either.

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  4. I have just had to disallow Anonymous Comments on http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com - this means that Commenters have to Follow the blog but, like you, we don't have the time to trawl through and delete every day. This has been Kath Langrish's job and she was being swamped.

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    Replies
    1. Mary, allowing only followers to comment and disallowing anonymous followers is not the same thing. Registered users/people with Google accounts can be allowed to comment and don't have to follow the blog to do so.

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    2. You have captcha off on History Girls. It's a bit of a balancing act, isn't it? Either disenfranchise people who want to comment anonymously or inflict captcha on everyone...

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  5. I think that the best way to deal with spam is definitely to just disallow anonymous posters and let blogger catch the small amount that might still give it a go! It works well for me.

    Just saying this because CAPTCHA is so hard for lots of people to read. My eyesight is very poor so I have to use CAPTCHA bypass software called RUMOLA to read and fill in CAPTCHAs for me. That means I can still comment on your blog but lots of other people might not be able to/be bothered to get past the gatekeeper of google reCAPTCHA!

    Sorry to hear some of your spam was abusive, I have never seen that before :(

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    1. That's a valuable point, Alicia, and one I have been thinking about. It's the issue of balancing the difficulty of Captcha with the desire for people sometimes to comment anonymously.

      Because of the nature of the blog, people sometimes want to talk about their relationships/problems with publishers and agents that they can't do without being anonymous. If it were blog where people just - I don't know - listed their favourite cake or something, ruling out anonymous comments would be the obvious solution. But in this particular case, some of the most honest and valuable comments are anonymous.

      I'll continue thinking about it, and maybe give it a try...

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  6. On my blog I don't have word verification and don't allow anonymous comments. I have virtually no problems with spam.

    The new Captchas are ridiculously difficult on occasion. It's a disincentive to comment.

    Okay, one Captcha wrong. Try again.

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  7. I agree Lexi, about it being difficult and I find them very frustrating. But see my comment above about people wanting to talk anonymously about their publishers and agents.

    Still, on balance there are fewer people who want to hide legitimately than there are people annoyed by captcha. So I'll turn it off and remove anonymous commenting.

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  8. Moderation might help with your wish to allow anonymous comments. And you still don't have to have Captcha.

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  9. Sue, I find moderation slightly insulting, and the ensuing time lag between commenting and posting makes discussion less likely.

    Query Shark 'moderated' a comment of mine last week. It was, "Have to ask, what happened to Query #230?" We'll never know. And I won't be commenting there again.

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  10. I'm not keen on moderation, I must say. I try to look at comments as soon as I can, but if I'm away for a few days then it's very discouraging (and rude) if someone has commented and I haven't had a chance to approve their comment.

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  11. I regard Captcha ( which I didn't know was called that, but how wonderful that it is!) as a kind of puzzle I have to do! Kind of fun! Let's have a go now...

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  12. My comment was published straight away with no Captcha....wonder if it's switched on?? Let's try again.

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  13. I turned it off, Adele - see a comment above!

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