Monday, December 24, 2012

Blogger creaks, and cracks

I'm drowning in spam comments, which outnumber real comments by around ten to one.  The problem is that some of you comment anonymously, and I don't want to cut that off.  But that gives a free pass to the spammers, and while the comments are (mostly) getting caught in Blogger's spam filter, it's increasingly a pain to go through and make sure that none of you got swept up by the filter (which happens rather more than I'd like).

What I'd like is to require a CAPTCHA for anonymous comments only.  Blogger doesn't have that option, and likely won't:
I assume that Blogger, like Google Reader itself, is slowly going the way of Google Reader Shares. Blogger is legacy GoogleMinus, not a good fit for the post-2011 Google. A small but dedicated team doesn't have the resources to keep it healthy.
Gordon has some interesting thoughts at his post (and links to some of his older posts).  I'd hate to migrate to Wordpress, and Kevin's migration to Disqus was a nightmare of lost comments.  I'd also hate to ban anonymous comments.

Bah, humbug.

12 comments:

Bob said...

I don't see why Google doesn't just use the same "Nucaptcha" that USA Today and other sites use. That one, when it comes time to show a word verification, shows three bold capital letters (very easy to see), that rock back and forth to prevent bots from working.

Stephen said...

For much the same reason, and others, I did ban anonymous comments. It works.

Rev. Paul said...

What Stephen said. I banned anonymous comments months ago; yet did get a spam comment this morning. However, it was a Blogger user who included a completely irrelevant link in his comment ... in which he wished a merry Christmas to someone else. :)

Chas S. Clifton said...

I find that by setting comment moderation on all posts older than two days, I stop a lot of spam right there. And you can turn on word verification in the settings, although like Bob above, I do like the three dancing letters much better.

Dave H said...

I'd be perfectly happy for you to move to Wordpress, although I'm not the one who has to do all the work. As a reader, I've never cared for Blogger.

Please don't go to Disqus. I can't bear the thought. (My biggest complaint, again as a user, is the sites that say "Sign on with Disqus or Twitter/Facebook/Gmail," then when I try to sign on with Gmail it wants me to sign up for a Disqus ID.)

Rick C said...

Disqus is obnoxious. Lately, for example, it's been telling me that my sometime browser, IE10, is not supported. ORLY?

Alan said...

Wordpress and Akismet. Run it on Hostgator. You won't be sorry.

Ruth said...

Speaking of blogger, did Google turn on the mobile browser format or did you?

Borepatch said...

Ruth, it was Blogger. One of the things I like about their hosted service.

Sevesteen said...

Blogger's lack of options for dealing with comments is surprising. If I were in charge, there would be options for blacklisting and whitelisting particular accounts to bypass verification or moderation, and a method to score accounts based on published posts on other blogs, with heavier weighting given to blogs in your bloglist. Seems like that would be nearly trivial to implement.

AnarchAngel said...

Kevin an I were both migrating from another comment system, not blogger; and it was that commenting systems lack of a proper data structure for exports that caused the issue.

Blogger comments imported just fine (and still do).

I've been very happy with Disqus (as has Kevin), and I almost never get any spam... maybe a couple a week total.

Why am I still on blogger?

Two reasons:

1. Thousands and thousands of links that would break

2. You can't DDOS google.

bluesun said...

+1 to Alan, though I don't host my own blog. But Askimet ftw.