Thursday, April 15, 2010

Knock knock. Ding dong!

My bit of deep wisdom for the day...

Requiring commenters on your blog to complete word verification and go through comment moderation, is like requiring someone to ring your doorbell and knock before you decide if you'll let them in.

I know, it's not really a big deal. Just an annoyance.

If you like to moderate comments, that's fine. Honestly, I don't like having to moderate, so when I get spam, I just delete it. If you do moderate, you really don't need word verification.

I got spam with word verification, so I turned it off. If word verification works for you, keep it--but if you use Blogger, you might consider not using "embedded comments" with word verification. The embedded comment form makes the word verification process tedious, since the comment form has to load twice--once to enter the comment, once to enter the gibberish word.

Easy commenting--it's a beautiful, freeing thing! Peace, love, and simple blog commenting! Come together in sweet unity! Let's hold hands and sing together, to the tune of "Kum Bah Yah"--"Comment here, my friends. Comment here." Comment FREEDOM!

(Why do I suddenly feel the urge to burn my bra?)

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I am in total agreement with you on this topic. Just let the comments come as they will, and delete anything that are spam. We all read every single one anyway, so in a way we all moderate in some fashion.

Call Me Cate said...

I'm with you though I do see why some people decide to moderate. I did turn on moderation for older posts just because I found that's where most of my spam comments ended up.

If you burn a bra, I suggest that sports bra that was all deformed due to the washing machine.

Eternal Lizdom said...

I AGREE!

I'm pretty sure I've set my comments up so they are easy... I think I've even got them set pretty wide open...

Ryan Ashley Scott said...

Agreed. The spam is annoying, but not nearly as annoying as having to go moderate comments (assumming -and hoping - one gets more comments than spam, of course), but you have a valid point about both moderation and verification (which is altogether irritating when you try to comment quickly). Made me laugh. :)

minnemom said...

(I almost fell asleep while Blogger's comment window opened. Does anyone else have the slow-loading-Blogger-comment-form problem?)

I'd like to add another thing: Please be sure your commenters can choose a sign-in option other than "Google account" or "OpenID". I don't use either on a regular basis, so if you don't have an option for "Name/URL" I'll just move on and not leave my comment. This can easily be changed in Blogger/Blogspot under Settings-->Comments-->Who Can Comment?-->Anyone.

(Sigh... I just noticed that your only options are Google Account or OpenID, Beth. ;-) I'm going to to leave my comment with the dreaded Google Account option...just this once.)

Unknown said...

I'm right there with ya! And yes, it is rather upsetting to leave a comment (or think you did) only to find a window that says you have to enter a little word!

Unknown said...

And I loved your wee little note at the bottom lol.

Laurel said...

I went ahead and just changed my settings.

2cats said...

If i feel like commenting, I do. I don't care what is there if I have something to say, I say it. Whatever hoops I have to jump through I don't care, I think my comments are worth it. And it takes such a small amount of time.