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April 13, 2008
Speak Your Mind (Logistics and Other Boring Stuff)
I just finished something. A ball-busting project that was a pain in the ass to complete but will be, I think, worthwhile. I have now closed comments in every entry on this blog except for the last two or three. Here's why.
This post is Sallyacious entry number 827. Somewhere around entry 300, I started getting hammered with spam comments in older entries. I spent some time just deleting them, trying to leave comments open except for those entries that seemed to attract the spambots.
That turned out to be a temporary solution. So I used the comment moderation options on Moveable Type. Not so much helpful. The only thing that has ever worked against the blasted spambots, completely keeping them out of my comments, is to require people to sign in in order to comment. I HATE that option, it creates more problems than it solves. Some friends of mine can't get into the system, or it eats their comments. Other people don't want to bother with signing in. This, I understand, it's pain in the ass.
All this time (it's been a good three years since the spam comments started), I knew there was another way to do things. I just didn't want to take the time to close all of my old entries to comments. Because of course I had to do each entry individually. I couldn't just close a bunch at a time. And of course the longer I waited, the more back entries I had. There were, as I said, 300 or so when the problem started, closer to 400 when I realized I needed to take drastic action. Now, there are more than twice that many entries here.
Last summer (about 150 entries ago) I decided to close comments on my old stuff. It took forever and I only did about four months' worth. So I knew I had a slog ahead of me if I wanted to actually do this thing. And I wasn't willing, frankly, to take the time to do it.
Finally, though, I have had enough of the inconvenience to friends and friends-to-be (that would be those people who lurk but never say anything) with the commenting system. I want to hear from you. So I am opening comments to everybody.
I spent a good chunk of my time in the last week, and a LOT of yesterday, closing comments on all but the most recent two or three entries here. I will continue to close comments every time an entry gets to be two days old. However. This should do a lot toward keeping my comments spam-free, which means that I can now try removing the log-in requirment.
We'll see how it goes.
Posted by sally at April 13, 2008 11:54 AM
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