Interesting blog effect

Since setting up this departmental blog, we’ve been getting a huge amount of comments, mostly spam. So a couple of weeks ago I set up a registration process for comments — and while that’s stopped the spam, I’ve only had four people register to make comments. They haven’t made any since signing up – and all four are from known forum-spammers.

I’m curious if there’s a way to encourage comments from NON-spammers.

About Marc Carlson

The Librarian of Special Collections and University Archives, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa since November 2005.He holds a Masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from Oklahoma State University. He has worked in McFarlin Library since 1986.
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2 Responses to Interesting blog effect

  1. J.Eagleton says:

    Is there not a way to set up comments so that they have to be approved by an admin to appear on the blog?

    • Marc Carlson says:

      There is – and in fact all comments from someone who has not been approved before will be kicked into the moderate qeue, just like yours was this morning. Your comment was approved this morning, so that you should be able to comment freely from here on.

      The trick is to catch the spammers before they get approved – and that’s tricky since they can be really slick in the messages they leave. but we’re learning. Since we set up the registration thing, I’ve had six email addresses that are on lists of known spammers register, but only one of those has actually tried dumping spam into the comments of the messages.

      I had someone suggest that we use a plug-in to set up a “Like” thing through Facebook, which is interesting. However, since not everyone uses Facebook, and there are those who believe that clicking “like” buttons opens you up to all manner of cookies, I’m unconvinced that’s the optimum solution.

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