I noticed that certain posts are gaining an unusual amount of traction from the the spamming crowd. So I am trying an experiment. On "Dangerous Student Loans" and "Running out of money is no fun" I am showing existing, but closing further comment. I actually get noticeable traffic to these posts (at least the first one), but I suspect at least a portion of it is from the guerrilla marketing people.
Real people do look at older posts. I still get a fair amount of traffic from the Texas school kids looking for information on Karankawa Indians- particularly those trying to figure out what there homes looked like - hint: they likely were a group of Caribe Indians who settled on the coast - but term paper folk never leave comments.
6 comments:
Yes, it never ceases to amaze me as to which posts of mine get continuous responses, and which ones do not. Anything I post with a clearly conservative view tends to receive spam. I believe that Obama's recent win has emboldened those who lack the intellect to explain why they might disagree.
I haven't resorted to closing posts yet, but man, deleting the spam is an all-day job sometimes.
I actually just changed my comment period yesterday. I had left it open indefinitely for all posts. Recently, I've been getting more and more spam, almost always on old posts.
Another blogging friend told me that she had posts open for comment for 90 days, and then they were closed. She told me that on her blog, the only comments she got on posts older than that were spam.
I noticed that was pretty much what I got, too. I was getting increasing amounts of spam on old posts. So I finally closed comments on posts older than 90 days.
I hated doing it, but... I just have so much other stuff to do besides sifting through spam.
Jane: I have not noticed any particular political bent to the spammers.
Kelly: I agree. Thus the first half-measures.
Miss M: The book reviews occassionally get some very late legitimate comments. But in general 90 days is more than long enough time for comments on most types of posts.
I have noticed lately that spam has increased and always on an older post. Plus, the people are inordinately and orgasmically excited about something rather mundane. The spammers do not have English as their L1. There is never anything political and always from Anonymous.
Practical: Early on I had a few that would like to advertising, but would also actually make an intelligent comment on the post. I generally left those alone.
There are a few non-anonymous folks doing it as well. My guess is that they get paid more for commenting on posts that don't allow anonymous posting.
The problem is that blogger can be very buggy at times, and sometimes posting anonymously is the only way to post.
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