Saturday, January 30, 2010

Adventures in Blogging

In the roughly year and a half that I've been blogging, I've had one regular troll (who seems to have moved on), and about 4 or 5 drivebys. Testimony to the modest scope and reach of this blog. I don't think I want 200 to 300 post comment threads full of arguing cranks. I'll leave that to the political blogs.

Now, I get a lot of spam comments; spammers using the comment threads to sell their penis enhancement drugs, Nigerian business opportunities, get rich quick schemes, etc. I'm guessing that this is a result of the increasing effectiveness of spam-blockers on e-mail providers.
Do any of you other bloggers get these?

I still get the weird inexplicable stuff. I still get the Chinese writing comments on the same posting from almost a year ago. I get another in Cyrillic (Russian I presume, though there are other languages that use Cyrillic) always on the same post from over a year ago.

The comment moderation proves to be a very effective way of keeping all that junk from cluttering the comment threads, at least for me.

Do any of you have similar problems?

9 comments:

JayV said...

Because I make comments on other Episcopal related blogs, some of the trolls there have found mine... and post the most nonsensical stuff. So I started moderating. I also don't like anonymous posts and state that; still there are people who post anonymously, so I don't even bother to read them - I just delete.
- Jay

Alan Richardson said...

I've had no spam . . . but then I do moderate the few comments I get on my 'umble effort. I have noted spam on other blogs that I've read recently which don't use comment moderation, an horrendous chore I would imagine on a popular blog with the likely hood of lots of comments although there are some who manage to keep up. Ramblings of the Bearded One comes to mind.

Alan

The Religious Pícaro said...

Are you sure that the Chinese and Cyrillic ones are spam? I've had a couple of spam comments, but nothing serious. More concerning for me are the sketchy people on FaceBook who want to be your friends, but you know that they aren't real people at all (at least their profiles seem suspicious).

Counterlight said...

"Are you sure that the Chinese and Cyrillic ones are spam?"

No. Not being literate in either language, there is no way for me to tell.
I've written them back asking for translations or explanations, and received no reply.
Both post comments on posts that haven't been visible for months, usually on the same old post, over and over again. Rather than letting those comment threads fill up with material that I have no idea what it says, and with no explanation coming in any form I can understand, I delete them.
They could be anything from secret communications between dissidents to child porn.

Unknown said...

I get spam in Hebrew and Chinese and also have word recognition - finally.

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

I too get the Chinese ones. They are often to the last posts, but I get several cryptical ones way down ;=)

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

Had a Russian today also. Full with links.

Rick+ said...

     I get them too, Doug. They have stopped now that I have started using the Captcha feature. I have also copied the Chinese text and translated it through Google; it basically is the same kind of sex ad you see in regular spam.

Katy said...

If it makes you feel better, I have get the odd Chineese character spam and my blog is a little nothing thing that no one ever comments on.