This is a request to bloggers in general, but specifically for those of you on Blogspot.
Get rid of word verification!
I guess it makes you feel safer, maybe a little less bothered by spam.
I wonder if it bothers you that you get less comments?
It certainly bothers me that I leave less comments, that you make it more difficult for me to leave comments.
I always found it a pain after crafting my comment (actually before I even leave my comment it’s such a pain to have to go to a new page… But that’s your blogging platform of choice… Your choice), that either I mistype the word verification or it times out.
Instead of me leaving a comment and walking away with a smile, I grunt, die a little inside and have another go. All being well I haven’t flicked to another page and forgotten the unposted comment.
Mobile Hater!
The thing is these days I do 80%+ of my reading via my iPhone. Once again, this is a bit drawn out.
- Read in feedreader & decide to comment.
- Open post page itself
- Open comments page
- Make comment
- Choose profile
- Enter word verification
- Pray everything goes to plan
It is incredibly painful!
I have been commenting on some blogs lately that at 1st glance have a comment friendly page.
- The comments section is on the post page – great!
- It is going to ask for my profile ID rather than make me fill in 3 fields of details – awesome!
I comment, hit Post and…
30 seconds later when the page comes back my comment failed…
I hit Post again and…
Word Verification… F’n stupid word verification!
At this point it’s 50/50 whether I leave the comment or not. I have gone to the trouble to get to the page, write the comment and wait to discover my comment hasn’t gone through.
But now the element of frustration is as high as the desire to comment.
God forbid if your blog is the 2nd or 3rd blog in a row with this system. As soon as I see it, I close the page and go looking for a comment friendly blog instead.
If you are an awesome blogger that’s getting 10’s or 100’s of comments a day mixed in with hundreds of spam, then I guess I can’t blame you for having an extra level of frustration built into your commenting system.
If your not that awesome (I sure as hell aren’t) then make it easy, or at least easier.
Your spam filter will automatically catch most of it. I’m not sure about your blog but I know I haven’t seen the 3,000 odd spam comments that have been blocked from here. I have only seen a fraction because most just get shafted automatically.
I guess the question for you as the blogger is:
What’s more important:
- Screwing everyone to ensure that you never have to deal with any spam, while screwing and discouraging your real readers, or
- Making life easier for the already timid commenters and dealing with the 10 spam per week that get through and require you to press that “Delete Spam” button.
I’ll leave it to you, but just for the record, if I, someone that loves to read AND comment, is discouraged from leaving comments, how is anyone else going to feel?
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/12/01/dear-bloggers/
I hate word verification too. Especially when someone tries out a new blog format, and doesn’t realize that due to some design flaw, you cant see the word to be verified, thus making it impossible to comment. I wonder then if the blogger even realizes this is the case! I usually try to contact them via email or something to let them know.
Out of curiosity, is it a blogger thing to have it go to a separate page for comments? Is there a way to turn that off?
I think it’s only blogger, but I think some templates keep it all in one.
How to do it? No ideas I’m afraid
I dislike it, because my comments, as typo-ridden as they are, ususally take me several minutes to try to compose. (I’m generally rambling and ADD – so I try to edit that out before hitting [submit]) and, as you note, the page has usually timed out by then.
The only good news is that if I thit [back] *usually* my text is still there.
If my text is gone, then so is my comment. I don’t have *that* much time on my hands (99% of my reading/blogging is done at work)
Plus I’m a tad lazy *blush*
I’m lazy too… Well more often I am pressed for time… But I am lazy by nature
I am so conflicted by this. On the one hand.. I LOVE comments.. on the other hand I HATE (HATE HATE 1000x HATE) spam.
TNB Blog doesn’t use word verification and averages ~25-30 spam/day. My blog has word verification and averages ~3 spams/day.
Ok.. I’ll try this.. I’ll take it down for 1 week and see what the results are. Srsly.. I put it up when I had 4k spam comments appear overnight. … I’m still scared to take it down.
Nibs
Owww Owww just Owww 4k spam!
I have found WP.com’s default spam filter pretty good. As I mentioned I am not disturbed by most of it.
That said I think the have improved things in the past 18 months I’ve been blogging. The comments/spam handling area has had lots of improvements.
I wonder how Larisa goes. She’s on blogspot/blogger whatever it is and no longer has word verification
Day 1: 48 spam. Up from the normal 6. Akismet caught all but 1 of them.
Owww 48!
I wonder what makes you so popular with the spam peddlers?
I wonder if/think that number will reduce as you confirm them as spam. The filter will start to trust itself and not bother you any more
Day two: 46 spam. Akismet had 1 false positive and 2 misses.
I was just updating my about page.. no rapped knuckles here…
Anyway.. since I updated it a week ago, I have received nearly 400 more spam attempts.
12,333 spam (as of November 28th 09, but let’s face it, that will have increased to at least 13,333 by now) edit: 12,729 on Dec 3rd
I say attempts, because I have had absolutely no interaction with them. Akismet has removed them permanently from sight.
I have only had 4 that made it through for moderation… due to the wow.com linkage.
What program does Nib use that gives the wow-related words?
It’s a WordPress plugin: Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam. http://www.theblog.ca/anti-spam
Thanks Nib!
FYI, I have a Nib inspired post coming up in a couple of hours…
Sent from my iPhone
Not to be the contrary bastard (well, OK, I get paid for that very product, but that’s not what I’m selling here), but the choice as stated is (1) screwing commenters or (2) stopping spam. Not once has that choice actually been made by said bloggers, I can say with a high degree of confidence. You may FEEL screwed over, but that’s your perception, and NOT said bloggers’ intent. I realize that might be coming from the depths of frustration, but man I’d be horked if someone characterized me like that.
Said with utmost respect.
Been a while since I was on Blogspot, but I don’t remember if it even had anti-spam software built in. WP’s is just dandy, though.
@Nibs – yours is actually one I like since (IIRC) it uses WoW words, which is several kinds of awesome.
I love your respect and definitely never intended to tarnish blogger with the suggestion their objective was to screw commenters… But I’m guessing you knew that.
I hope all blogging platforms have a spam filter… I couldn’t imagine life without one….
Actually that’s not true years ago I started a blog on WP… Don’t ask me why, I never posted anything… But I still got spammed.
I must agree with you on Nib’s words… They are short and uncomplicated and as you say “topic related”, in the sense that the topic is WoW
We added the security measures to my blog’s comment system because I was getting overwhelmed by spam comments way too much.
I don’t like the word verification addon that is currently on my blog, because I think it’s too much. I’m just not sure how to find a more user-friendly one. My blog is popular enough that even with my nearly impossible to read recaptcha, I still end up with a lot of comments on my blog. I know it frustrated some of my readers when we first added it, but it really, really helped combat the spam problem I was having.
I guess the point to take away from this is it isn’t something you want to do and if there was a better option you would give it a go…
But due to the nuttas that fill the world you have no choice.
At least options have been explored!
Fine, but only because you asked. If I can figure out where.
I have that much power over you…
Mmmm I also want icecream with shredded chocolate and Pavalova with crushed mint crisp…
Mmmmm nomnom
My blog will ’soon’ contain ice cream.
And Pav? Please have Pav…. Between Lamingtons and Pav Aussies are always happy
Sent from my iPhone
But the word verification “words” are funny…
I’m pretty sure mine doesn’t have one.
The ones I hate are the “stealth” verifications.
Type comment, press submit, move to next tab, check on that one later and realize that the word verification came up AFTER the submit button was pressed.
Jerks.
Ohhh yeah. Stealth verification are the worst, and seem to work the worst on iPhones.
It doesn’t pop up and give you the request, it tells you that you failed. If you don’t stubbonly try again by repairing you would never know that the system failed rather than you
Gah, speaking of frustrating, why do I have to have a wordpress.com account to subscribe to the comment thread?
Obviously I won’t see the answer, but if there’s something that can be tweaked …
I don’t know Grimm, but I will see if there is something I can change (once I have access to my PC).
Meanwhile, it’s messy but you could always subscribe to the RSS feed for the post’s comments.
The only option about emailed comments is this:
Subscribe To Comments: Don’t allow visitors to subscribe to the comments made on this blog.
Not much flexibility in the ol’ WP hosted variety
I, too, dislike Word Verification. I guess Lath and I are lucky that by choosing WordPress we have built in spam detection (and sometimes it’s a bit too clever and eats real comments!) that doesn’t require us to be more demanding of our readers when they comment.
I would also like to say, since a lot of bloggers may read this, if you use Blogspot please give your commenters, like me, a chance to reply using their Name/Email/Website instead of just an AIM/WordPress/Blogspot/OpenID/Gmail etc account. Of all those accounts I only have GMail and it’s for personal use so I prefer not to use it at all. And since our WordPress blog isn’t hosted at WordPress, this option never seems to work for me.
I had to retrieve Fish’s (Gnome Warrior is an Oxymoron) comments for quite a while.
Akismet finally caught up… I guess Fish just sounded a bit suss.
I think I would be unlucky to have one false positive a month.
Agree >.>
Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of spam but so far Akismet has caught all of it. If anything non-spam slips through into Akismet, easy enough to remove it.
And vice versa… I can spam those that slip throughfrom dashboard or from mail… Sold!
I use an out of date browser at work – so when commenting on some posts the verification details won’t read correctly in the browser so I have to preview to see the verifcation and then post the comment, and then others I can’t even see the comment button to press.. so need to star the post and remember to comment on later, it’s a little bit of a pain.
I think it was Kestral a while back that implored bloggers to take off waiting for approvals on their blog comments to encourage people to comment more – maybe you will start ur own little revolution!
The only thing worse than word verification is the Blogger users who forget to activate the option to leave comments with name/url. If I have to type in a word verification AND then notice I can only post with a google account or openID, that really annoys me.
WordPress does spam a bit better, but one of us has to log in to check it.
I am going to see if we can install word verification for gnomes only, but then half of us would get word verified.
/le sigh.
You are a gnome, come up with an invention to get around it…duh.
Gnomes create /silly novelty items… Your looking for a Goblin explosive expert…
As my blog has grown more popular I’ve started to get more and more spam to deal with – even with the word verification thing acitivated. Older posts are especially likely to be attacked. I have to deal with this on a daily bases now. I don’t dare to think what would happen if I took it away. I’m not a fan of moderation of comments, and I haven’t yet found it necessary to put in another gate to keep the trolls and spam away, but I understand that some bloggers have to go that far to protect their territory (like poor Tobold, who all but stopped blogging because of all the crap people wrote.)
I’m not quite sure how this word verification works, but my impression is that it doesn’t trigger every time, only sometimes. If you’ve proved you’re a real human a few times, it won’t ask you instantly again. It takes samples.
There are different levels of it. I don’t mind the one with only a word verification. I agree though that the one where you have to pick a profila and go through a ton of other stuff is quite annoying.
Just remember that we have different platforms and different circumstances. Everyone hasn’t got a spam filter protected WordPress.
Ahh I must be special then… or spam you with comments until I got instant approval, low finance comments.
I prefer the profiles to the verification.
Obviously I have a WP one, therefore I have the OpenID and I toyed with Blogger for about 5 minutes so I have that profile too.
Typing Gnomeaggedon gets tedious, but less so that Gnomeaggedon x3 + email and blog extensions… especially if I am having a dyslexic day.
But I can live with typing in 3 fields… when I get stealth verified on top of that I go a little bananas (and I don’t even live in the State of the banana benders… Queensland)
Jong doesn’t verify me (though Megan used to)… I wonder…
Do you think they welcome the penis extension spam… I wonder if they pour through it on a Friday night selecting the best for next years valentines day cards…?
I use WordPress, without word verification – instead I opted to have a delay system, where I actively have to allow a comment.
This means I have a bit more work, and the commenter has to wait longer, but at least the comment is saved.
Some days I get no spam at all – but I have had times where I had 10 spam messages dunked every 30 minutes. I didn’t check in a weekend and had over 1000 spam messages waiting for me to clean up…
Well it appears Gnome Fire Mage blogs aren’t popular spam targets then.. I think worst case I have ever had was about 60 that got passed for moderation.. but I don’t see many on a daily basis
I did it…..just for you gnomy.
Hear hear! Word verification is a royal PITA
I don’t use it on my site and I find that Akismet is perfectly good for picking up the spam. WordPress > Blogspot anyday 
I’ve been frustrated by word verification on some blogs. The lack of name/url option can be a bummer at times as well.
That being said, spam is just a beotch to deal with. Even with wordpress’s spam filter there’s a lot I have to look at (numbers can vary greatly on the amounts).
We’ve had some false negatives and false positives.
This is why we opted to go with 1 time moderation. Meaning, the first time someone comments on our site, either Sideshow or myself have to approve it. After that, (as long as you use the same email) your comment will post immediately.
Since Side and I both routinely check email and such throughout the day, it’s rare for a comment to sit too long awaiting moderation (again, I stress usually, sometimes 1 or 2 will escape my attention for longer than I’d like).
I guess the key is… balance… to keep the operation of the blog running as smoothly as possible and keep the ease of user friendliness for readers.
[...] other thing she has been doing is giving daily updates on the change in her spam [...]
I had my 1st false positive in a long time this morning. 1st time poster I suspect carried on the wow.com tsunami.