Weblogging is growing up. Oh wait, you thought that would be a good thing? You must still be young. -- Mark Pilgrim
Like most other people working in this medium, I like the idea of open and unfettered comments. Like most sane people, however, I really dislike the reality of over 3,500 comment spams in less than 24 hours.
That was the reality here over the last day and, after spending hours reading about and installing a blacklist and other gizmos I’ve concluded that, for now at least, it really isn’t worth the aggravation and wasted time.
Until such time as Movabletype comes out with a fix for this, or until such time as some unknown hero develops a killer plugin, or until such time as the comment spammers are located and fed into industrial shredders feet first while ringed with web cams, I’m disabling comments here.
SpamCop I am not. Neither am I SpongeBob. The idea of maintaining a page with a big “Spam Me!” sign printed on it fills me with inertia.
Should you wish to comment on anything posted here, please mail it to me at
publisher-at-americandigest.org.
I’ll put it in an update.
For those who want to read the article that made up my mind for me, please check Mark Pilgrim’s take no prisoners article: Weblog Spam .
He’s right, you know.
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UPDATE: SB writes: "The problem with weblog comments is probably why the Blogfather himself, Glenn Reynolds, doesn't have comments. He also pointed out that it was like having spraycans available for people to put graffiti on your site as well, or words to that effect.
"I just wish that those who still have comments would have the software automatically remove the idiotic "First!" posts, but not necessarily the first posting. "
Now that's a software we could get behind.
Posted by Vanderleun at January 14, 2004 8:29 PM | TrackBack