It’s been a few weeks since I really had chance to work on anything for the website. Which is not to say that I have given up with it, just that I have been somewhat busy with other bits and pieces in my life. What I haven’t been able to avoid though is the sight of how messy the comments sections now looks.
I don’t like the old way of publishing on the web where I talk at you and you choose to read or not without ever getting a chance to feed back. So I have always designed my websites with commenting at their heart. I also don’t like making it difficult to comment, I don’t want you to have to sign up or register an account in order to post – I’d like to think that it’s unnecessary.
I thought that I had come up with the ideal comprimise when I created this version of the site. Anybody would be able to comment, and all you would need to do so is the completion of a captcha. All comments would then be moderated and approved for display.
Sadly the link spammers don’t seem to have grasped this. They continually spam the site (I guess using automated captcha solvers) to bypass the check I make, and even though their spam never gets approved, it does contribute to making the place look untidy.
Anyway. That’s it. I’ve had enough. From now on I am going to simply delete anything that looks like spam rather than just rejecting it. I am also going to make a change to how comments are changed in short order. Once your comment has been posted, it will not show up in the comments feed until it has been approved (Only approved comments will be visible). This replaces the current system of showing an “awaiting moderation” message. Hopefully this will reduce the automated spam since the username they post with will not be visible after submission.
