Friday, December 18, 2009

Blog Success or Not?

I've decided to make the comment moderation permanent.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of spam comments here, mostly crooked financial schemes, shady prescription drug services, etc. who want free advertising in the comments section of this blog.

Sad Brad seems obsessed with me. He's banned from commenting on this blog, but that doesn't stop him from trying. I end up dumping a lot of his comments out of the moderating bin every week. I keep comment moderation on to save my readers from gems such as these which he placed on some older posts from weeks back. That he would post these comments on threads that were old and no longer visible is very revealing.

I don't say to hell with anyone; permanent punishment is the vindictive dream of the believing community.
My dream is to be left alone as much as possible.
Yours is to have someone's d*ck in all of your orifices while taking part in some pointless political protest.
Whatever floats your boat.

Sweden will have exactly one member of its (formerly state-sponsored)Lutheran church by 2047, if current trends continue.
Want to know the one occaision when Swedish Lutherans enter a Swedish Lutheran church (for over 2/3rds of them)? Funerals.
You can't attract your own people and yet you want to preach to me about what I should believe or what I should do with my life?
Even for someone who believes that there's someone invisible whose every command must be followed, that's a bit much.

It's religion. Whether you have the "progressives" with "Jesus was really Che Guevara" or the Fundigelicals with "Jesus wants me to have the BMW", it's all nonsense dressed up and pretending that it hears voices telling the rest of us to vote Republican/Democrat.
Inherently ridiculous. Irresistible to those who don't have anything better to do and who enjoy dressing up.


So, that's what you've been missing folks. I'd say he's beyond sad.

This will be the last you hear from him on this blog, I promise.


I seem to have a regular visitor from the mysterious East who is very mysterious. Whoever it is regularly leaves comments on a single post of mine from weeks back titled "Princes of the Church." All of these posts appear to be in Chinese (they may be Japanese, they are definitely not Korean). As far as I know, there is only one occasional reader here who is Mandarin literate. I've written back to this person many times requesting a translation, but with no reply. I've started deleting the comments from the moderation bin, simply because I have no idea what they are. If this person has comments or reflections on that particular post, they should be aware that the host and most of the audience are not literate in their language.
Perhaps they are communications between Chinese dissidents? If that's the case, let's talk. Maybe it's someone spamming free advertising to some huge Chinese or Japanese language audience for this blog that I'm unaware of. And I thought no one read those posts I did on Japanese Buddhist art or Chinese painting!

Do any of you other bloggers have issues like these?

10 comments:

it's margaret said...

Oh yes.... Bad Brad left me quite a few. But he was obsessed with my female genitalia being in the wrong place.... and he was posting on old posts too. Comment moderation has nearly eliminated his posts. It used to be daily --then went to Sundays only --now it is down to just one a month or so.

But, then, of course, Brian started....

I just delete them both without reading them. There is a method to get their ISP or whatever, and block them from the site, but deleting them without reading them seems to be as effective.

How cool --somebody writing in Mandarin! I loved your Chinese painting essays. I love all your posts actually --whether I comment or not!

As to your Christmas, Doug --I hope and pray you and your beloved have a happy, safe, restive holiday --filled with beautiful things, people who love you, and good food. And happy cats, of course!

Many blessings.

Lisa Fox said...

Yuck re: Sad Brad.

Yes, I have the same problem with Chinese/Korean comments on old posts at the Episcopal Majority site. Strangely, they all seem to hit the same two (out of the dozens we posted).

And, of course, I get hatemail on old posts at MMOL.

My solution: In the settings, I turned comment moderation "on" for posts over 7 days old. Since those get sent to my e-mail account, it's easy to zip them into oblivion.

Counterlight said...

I don't bother to read Brad's comments anymore. They all say the same thing in the same key. I just hit "reject" whenever Brad or Brian or Anonymous appear. I discovered these while doing a little blog housekeeping. There were worse ones singling out particular regular readers here which I eliminated immediately.
What a sicko!

I can't figure out what the Asian comments are all about.

I believe my comment moderation covers all of the posts, even past ones, but I'll check again.

susan s. said...

Grandmere Mimi gets those Chinese comments too. I too am so tired of seeing Brad's comments, and of course only get them in email if I make a comment and then click the followup comments box. I think you're doing the right thing to reject his comments.

jaycoles@gmail.com said...

I have had comment moderation on for quite awhile and I turned on the word verification also but friends could not comment so I went back to rejecting those comments. The come on old posts and usually say nothing about the most. Anonymous is usually the sender.

I tried putting the oriental language into Babelfish to see if I could translate it but no way so I just reject them all. Gives me a feeling of power. BTW I love your blog.

June Butler said...

Yes, I get the oriental characters, too, on the same old posts repeatedly. Since I have reported them as spam and introduced word verification, they have mostly stopped.

Rick+ said...

     Yes, I've gotten the random spam, but only on much older blog entires. And yes, I've gotten the troll-type, but only really attacked once. Still, I was thrilled enough about the attack on my fledgling blog to write Mad Priest to tell him I'd been blooded! I was very proud.

Brian R said...

I flick Brad straight off, he has a regular comment about my being a gay librarian. Have also had the chinese characters but think word verification blocks them.
Wish brian would go away, I am Brian R

MarkBrunson said...

Brad is clearly disturbed, and sad in the truest sense. I really wonder what sort of life he has that stirring the pot on blogs is all he has to do.

I dump a fair number of comments from him, too. He just is . . . irrelevant. That's the worst part. To see a human being that is that empty and purposeless.

Counterlight said...

My! I look at the testimony from all these bloggers Brad has trolled, and I can only conclude that he is one sick obsessive dude.

I have to make the same conclusion about the mysterious Chinese poster. I got another one last night.