If you had your house on the market and were hosting an open house, would you be meeting people at the door and making them prove they could afford to buy your home before you let them in? Or would you allow them in, let them look around, open cabinets, look in the closets and wish them a lovely day on their way out?
You want people to not only come to your blog, you want them to interact. You want them to comment. But when someone takes the time to type out a thoughtful (or funny, snide, provocative, take your pick) comment, why would you then put the onus on them to prove that they are not blog-scum by making them squint and type out a captcha - and sometimes retype (okay I usually get them wrong the first time) before you allow that precious comment to be published?What that says to many readers is that your blog is not necessarily a friendly place. That you would inconvenience your readers rather than yourself. That you really don't care if they comment. I mean - if you feel the need to moderate, then take the responsibility on yourself and use comment moderation. A pain in the butt for sure having to approve every comment before they are displayed. But isn't that better than making all of your readers pay for some occasional visiting trolls or spamming software?
Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm captcha-challenged. But more than half the time I CAN'T MAKE OUT THE DAMN THING! Ahem. It annoys me.
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And I'm willing to bet you would get more comments if you would take that word verification off and throw it in the very back of your blog closet. You don't have to serve tea or some cookies (although how nice would that be?). But please stop making me beg to comment on your posts. Because I don't know about you - but lately if I don't get that captcha on the first try - I'm outa there, abandoned comment or no.
JUST SAYIN'.
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I honestly don't get it - it isn't that hard to find a better way. And honestly - with Blogger's spam thing now - very few spam comments make it through these days.
ReplyDeleteI am totally with you on this one! Don't worry. You aren't the only CAPTCHA challenged person. I literally cannot read the things and I find it super frustrating! I have recently found some CAPTCHA bypass software called RUMOLA that reads and fills in CAPTCHAs for you which definitely makes blog world a much less stressful place! On the other hand, why can't people just take your advice and GET RID?!
ReplyDeleteI should have known there was something to defeat captchas! Thanks for the heads up on that! And I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who has trouble with them - thanks for coming by!
DeleteOh! You have to pay for Rumola - but honestly - for a dollar a year - maybe 2 - it's worth it!
ReplyDeleteOK. One more go at taking off Captcha on my blog! I can't win either way - it's not always convenient for me to moderate every comment on a timely basis even with a handy smartphone. I get a lot of comments on giveaway days! Spammers do get through Blogger's spam filter - the human ones at any rate.
ReplyDeleteNow who would want to spam you Pearl? You're so nice! :) I know, there's no accounting for idiots. But I do appreciate the attempt, really I do! I'll send you my email, I'd do your moderation for you!
DeleteI think a lot of spamming is automated so it is not personal. So far since I commented, I have had 5 spam and just 1 genuine comment. So there is A LOT of moderation and deleting on my part which is why I keep reinstating Captcha after a while. I'll leave this latest experiment running for a while and see if my patience holds! I'd rather blog!
ReplyDeleteOh I'm sorry Pearl. Maybe it is necessary for some. I wonder why your stuff gets through? I see the spam comments come into my email, but not make it to my blog. Hmm. And I wonder why you get so much? I wonder if it's related to ads or something? Well, I guess if I could figure it out I'd be rich.
DeleteI moderate them so they don't go to the blog first but then my inbox gets inundated. Yeah, let me know if you figure it out!
ReplyDeleteJust curious - have you tried no moderation or word verification? At all? I suppose that's a stupid question but ..
DeleteI am doing no word verification but moderating...a lot. There is no way I can take all the brakes off because the spammers will get want they want - links in my blog. It's not the ads that attract them. Sites with enough page rank like mine are targeted. The jewelry niche is also particularly attractive. They want to improve their own site rankings by leaving inbound links on other, preferably larger blogs. A fact that many jewelry artisans miss and don't do themselves!
ReplyDeleteThese spammers work like viagra advertisers - blanket bombing in the hope that just a tiny fraction of bloggers will not delete the spam comments. The software they use can be incredibly sophisticated as they are able to choose sites and even hide their own behind proxies. See this post which explains more - http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/3191/revealed-the-grubby-world-of-comment-spam/
I'll try and stick out a bit longer this time. The trouble is, even when you train Google's spam filter to pick out the baddies forever, more take their place. :-(
When you say moderating .. do you mean actual comment moderation? Or just monitoring your email for comments? Because I wonder if you see the comments that would be sent to the spam filter by blogger - but it's giving you the opportunity to choose, first. Know what I mean? Really Pearl, you don't have to go through all this because I'm annoyed. Obviously I don't have page rank like you do and only have to deal with a few spam comments per week. Still - I read other blogs that are very popular who don't moderate or word verify .. sorry, it's just my nature to want to figure it out.
ReplyDeleteActual comment moderation. I do see the notifications in my email as well which I delete - another chore. Sometimes Blogger's spam filter automatically places the spam (and the occasional legit comment) directly in the spam comment section but far from always. Probably needs training just like gmail's spam filter. Too bad there new crops of spammers every time!
ReplyDeleteBlogs with lots of comments aren't necessarily those with good page ranks - just very friendly communities whose members know each other and are active on each other's blogs.
No apologies needed! I am just as curious as you are!
Well - being the detective I am - or scientist you are - I say take off moderation and word verification for a set amount of time - say 6 hours - and see what actually makes it to the blog. It would be a test.
DeleteBeing the scientist I was, I've already done the experiment! More than once. Those spam comments which didn't get filtered do appear on my blog.
ReplyDeleteUGH!! I'm down for the count. Flat on the mat. Spam wins. I. Hate. It!
DeleteI'm there on the same level, only I have had to re-type the captcha 4 or 5 times then realized I needed a space between the two words or what not. I had an open blog one time and remembering my blog is on my web site, my web site besidethetrail.ca is also my business. One time we got a virius come in through my blog posts and we spent 5 days with the server cleaning up our site. Now I moderate the site and I'll continue to do that. I love people, love comments, but some of them that I have read I'd not want to share, lol.
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm taking it off, if I can remember how. I never had it, and then started getting a bunch of spam, so I put it on. But heck, I think your point is well made.
ReplyDeleteWell I just commented on your blog - you must have remembered how! :) I appreciate it!
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