Until further notice
I thought I had loosened restrictions on comments, but after going into the admin pages more deeply I saw that I still had the restrictions that I set up some days ago — that you have to be logged on to comment.
Now, what’s weird is that in all this time, the spammers have been flooding this blog with comments (which sit in the moderation cue, and which I can “bulk” eliminate/ mark as spam). I don’t understand why they still get through. I even went so far as to close the comments board on each individual entry that got spammed, only to discover that a day or two later, another spam comment would show up in the moderation cue — for the very entry whose comment board I had just locked the day before.
What’s up with that? Perhaps I should eliminate comments altogether? There must be close to 100 spam comments per day, with close to 10% landing on entries whose comments boards are already closed. What a waste of my time…
Update, Feb.16: Daryl Cobranchi (who, I’m delighted to note, has also joined Cavalor Eptith‘s excellent Digital Press Club) just sent me an email, wherein he writes:
They’re most likely trackback spam, which get through even when comments are closed. Try the Spam Karma 2 plugin for WP. Once trained, it’ll stop all types of spam.
Thank you, Daryl — that makes sense. Now I just have to figure out how to get this info to the folks at Harvard’s Berkman Center (where this blog is hosted). It seems I’m limited in installing plug-ins.
I may as well change the settings back to normal, since the ultra restrictions I have now simply keep good comments out, even as the bad bad spammers keep getting through…
And PPS to Cavalor: I received your invitation to join The Digital Press Club, but have been too busy dealing with a whole bunch of potential “terra” changes (really big ones), hence the delay in answering…
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