PG just received a message expressing concern over his recent change to the process by which visitors can comment on TPV.
His purpose was to help avoid comment spam, which has been flowing in at increasing volumes, so he activated a sign-in plugin and added ReCaptcha to the comment form. There are some other spammy activities circling around the blog for which PG is looking for a solution.
PG has never and will never share emails or other information concerning those who visit TPV absent a court order to do so (which he doesn’t anticipate receiving any time soon). If anyone who has provided this information to TPV would like it removed, PG will do so if he receives a request from such individual.
If any visitors know about a better solution to comment spam than the one PG has installed, he would be happy to hear about it in a message.
Slightly odd fact: when I commented on 23 November neither of the two earlier comments had appeared and so were missing from my count of recent comments. Why they only appeared on my screen after my comment I don’t know unless it was something to do with moderation, though I thought that signing in was supposed to remove the need for this.
I thought about commenting when I first read this but – having no better solution to offer – decided against it. Looking back three days later I have changed my mind.
As a reader of the blog the old system worked fine: there was no spam posted and – as long as one didn’t forget to enter one’s name and email – there was no delay before a comment appeared. In theory, someone could post to establish their good reputation and then start spamming but I suspect that this is not attractive (bad ROI) in today’s world of computerised mass spamming.
What we didn’t see was what was going on behind the scenes and just how much work PG had to put in to deal with the emails from “unapproved” sources. I assume that this was very high given the solution he has felt forced to adopt.
Unfortunately – though it is no doubt a huge work saving for PG – the “be logged in” approach is not working for the blog’s readers. One of the great attractions of The PV has always been the comments, always interesting, frequently erudite and rarely if ever descending to the depths of personal abuse that infects so much of the internet (no doubt the non political nature of the blog helps here but there are plenty of people out there who cannot avoid interjecting snide comments about Trump or SJWs whatever the putative subject of a posting; fortunately these types are either are absent from the commentators or are more restrained than they are on other forums).
By “not working” I mean that the number of comments has fallen off a cliff. In the nine or ten days since the policy was introduced there have been only 14 comments, excluding this one – and we have to thank Karen for six of these (and another three were really about the new comments policy). Ideally, the regular commentators at least should sign up for WordPress accounts though this would still deprive us of the many high quality comments from one off or occasional users.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of such sign ups happening – though I would appeal to everyone to do so, it’s very easy and not much of an additional security risk (and another password to remember is not a problem as I’m sure that you are all using password managers by now).
Given the lack of such sign ups is there another solution? As I do not have a blog I have no personal experience to offer but I have noticed that many of the blogs I read are using the Askimet spam filter for WordPress (https://akismet.com/) which I think is free (or “Name Your Price”) for personal blogs. I cannot say how effective this would be but is it worth a try? It is, of course, not the only anti-spam plug in but it is the only one I’ve seen being used.
(And I still miss the comment spell checker so apologies for any typos.)
I’m in! Didn’t take long. And I sympathize with the need to control spam.
Sorry, PG – I didn’t realize the WordPress symbol meant I should create a NEW login.
Have done so – whatever works for you. Thanks for letting me comment.