2.26.2013

annoying anonymous A.M.

y'all.  anonymous spammer commenters have passed the level of minor annoyance and vaulted themselves into carrot topdom.  i went to sleep to 20 bouts of spam and woke up to 25 more.  no bueno.  rather than spending my free hour this morning responding to your lovely comments on my last post, i've spent sixty minutes researching the extermination of computer generated nonsense. 

i don't mind real peeps who post anonymously.  but i do hate spam.  it's so...unclean.  so, it seems i'll have to go back to some form of moderation.  which do i hate more?  making someone type an illegible phrase, or making someone sign into an account in order to comment?  well, almost everyone is signed into some account or another, it would seem the better choice.  BUT WAIT Y'ALL, BLOGGER DONE BROUGHT BACK WORD VERIFICATION.


do you remember word verification of yore?  the simple, pretty, nonsensical word that would often seem to hold some hidden meaning totally relevant to the conversation?  captcha in all its squint-inducing-swirliness should die like the hellspawn it is, but i actually used to like word verification.  we used to play games with it, 'member?  right before blogger switched to captcha, i had a mind to hold a giveaway based on the best definition of one of those wacko jumbles.  then they pulled the rug out.

i guess the carpet has been cleaned and taken out of storage.  let's see if its a charming throwback, or just itchy underfoot.  suggestions and opinions welcome!

UPDATE: HEY GUESS WHAT IGNORE EVERYTHING I JUST SAID.  turning on word verification just brought that pisser captcha back.  i refuse to use captcha.  it's off again.  suggestions and opinions on a happier spam free comments section still welcome.

i'll be back around cocktail hour with the winner of the second tooly giveaway (which you still have time to enter, thanks to the spammers!  this tool will save your silks,yo).  prize number three will also be revealed...

67 comments:

  1. DISQUS. We should all be using Disqus. Yes you have to sign in (but I sign in when I comment in your current set-up) and then you can be notified when people respond to your comments so it is like an actual conversation and not like you're just shooting your thoughts into a cold, uncaring universe. DISQUS, DISQUS, DISQUS! (Said in that chanting way sports ball fans yell at their sports ball games). ALso super easy to install.

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    1. tried it... want to kill it, because i want so much to love it, and it won't let me. disqus is reaaaaaallllly wonky with gadgets, signs me out constantly, and then when i type comments, it makes me sign back in, erasing my comment and closing the blog i'm reading...

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    2. Yeah, I thought Disqus was the holy grail at first. And I do like that you can respond to comments and when someone responds to my comment I get notified. It's great that way. But it hates mobile devices and sometimes it has bad hair days with Chrome. They say they are working on it...

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  2. It's gotten so bad lately, hasn't it?

    I tried Disqus, and tbh, didn't like it. I've found so many peeps on my blogroll through clicking through the links on their names to their own blogs. Maybe I'm just social media/computer challenged, but when I tried to do that, I'd just get sent back to my own Disqus comment section every single time, and that made me sad. (Especially since I can't always tell just from a first name whose blog it is.) So I uninstalled it and went back to plain ol' Blogger. But since they do let me reply directly to comments now, it's not so bad. I also disabled anonymous commenting altogether, and have it on full moderation. So no annoying captcha to write, and all I have to do is check in every so often and hit the publish button.

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    1. ah, i've tried disqus a couple times, and i have to say it's not my deal. i get the same problems!

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    2. I forgot to mention before that I also had a regular commenter from Europe tell me that she could only comment on certain browsers after I installed it. Weird.

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  3. hate captcha also! even my wee little blog gets loads of annoying spam. i've thought of switching to wordpress and abandoning blogger altogether!

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    1. i've considered it too, we host other sites there and it would make things easier... are WP's comments/spam much better? i feel like i always have to be signed into my WP account to comment there.

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    2. i think the over-reaching google umbrella keeps me signed in to blogger whereas WP occasionally logs you out. maybe that's not a bad thing... i can't think of a single WP blog that has any sort of captcha. maybe someone else can chime in on how that works?

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    3. I've also been considering switching to wordpress. Ugh. I added the captchas because the spam was just too much. But I hate when i try to comment on someone's blog and I keep getting it wrong...I sometimes give up.

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    4. Wordpress is great spam wise! Just use Akismet. Saves all the trouble. No captchas or anything. It depends on what Wordpress you mean. I'm not 100% sure about wordpress.com as I have a self-hosted Wordpress site.
      Can I ask, do commenters find Disqus annoying? I have it and I would hate to be annoying people with it!

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    5. actually... i loved disqus at first, but i do find it annoying now. it never remembers my info and i have to sign in every time-- and on a tablet, when i sign in, it closes the blog i wanted to comment on :(

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  4. I second Disqus! Becky, not sure why it acted so oddly for you, do you have an older computer?

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    1. ah, but on the new ipad, c'est tres wonky....

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    2. Not particularly so. And I've also had the issue on my laptop, which is much newer.

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  5. Oooh I'm not a fan of captcha! It is devilspawn. I second the Disqus chant. I hear Becky's complaint of the click-through issue, that's happened to me before too, but it doesn't happen ALL the time, so I think it has more to do with people's actual settings than just an obnoxious Disqus quirk.

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    1. see comment numero two, girl, disqus has thwarted many of my attempts to holler at you on my gadget! i'm hoping they'll improve...

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  6. UVAMA (noun): The skin condition suffered by President Obama after too much tanning.

    Wait, we're not playing that game? Aww. Captcha is ruining my fun.

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    1. But that was brilliant, you Should win a prize!

      Ditto on Disqus, I created an account, used it once at T&L and it never worked again.

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  7. Captcha is a pain in the nads. Disqus is in my experience a good solution, but i have no experience plugging it into a publishing platform like Blogger.
    From what I read, it does kinda suck for you :-/ Have you tried managing comments on the disqus site instead of with this gadget thingie?

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  8. Also, I had to login to google, then go get my phone for the code for my two-stage authentication that I have setup on my google account just to be able to post.
    All the while I am signed in in Gmail in another tab of this Chrome browser that has me signed in to the same Google account.

    I'm just saying, everything has its downsides.

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    1. Last but not least, if you're looking to score some viagra, make sure to drop me a line at penisenlargements@hotmale.com

      Obviously, I'm not serious. It's @hotmail.com :)

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    2. joost. i love you.

      and i hate ALL THE BULLSHIT you're going through to type those pearls. i thought i had a "walk all over me" setting on this jammy.

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  9. I hope Blogger tunes in and offers something like Akismet, which Wordpress uses. It basically shuffles off all the annoying comments to a spam folder never to be seen again unless you want to have a laugh. It's one thing Wordpress got right. have used Disqus and IntenseDebate for blogs I administrate elsewhere and I'm just not a fan. No option to comment with a link to your url without having a Facebook-like public profile of all your commenting activity. I like my privacy and I like my comments to be integral to a blog and not to a profile.

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  10. Ugh I hate captcha! And I dislike the fact that when someone leaves a comment and I reply they had no way of knowing unless they subscribe by email and get everyone else's comments bombarding their email or just came back to my post to check on my reply. I comment on tons of blogs and can't remember to go back and check them all. That's why I switched to Disqus because it notifies by email of any replies to comments. I think they could work on it, I'm not in love with it by any means. Its not IE compatible and their is certain code I had to enter to be able to let my mobile readers leave comments. Also don't like that it shows all your commenting activity like Amy stated above. oh oh oh and that I can't click on a commenter's name and be directed to their blog if they have one like Beckey stated. Ok I'm done.

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    1. hilarious.

      yeah, that's why i wanted to love disqus too! months later i'll remember something drunkenly said somewhere else that i really wanted a reply to... feh. and i hate clicking on a disqus profile and getting all their recents comments, rather than their blog. but wait you said both those things. oh lookee my cotes du rhone needs a refill.

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  11. Oh gosh! I wish I had the answer for you. Really. So annoying...

    Blogger still has such a long way to go - and that's why so many people move to Wordpress.

    (I still love Blogger, by the way, but it REALLY could get so much better. Come on, Google!!!)

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  12. Only you would think to make a game out of word verification. Only Marcy.

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  13. i don't like disqus. we use IE at work (as some of the systems we use don't work well on other browwsers) and disqus doesn't like it. it also seems to sign me in as my real name, rather than blog name and i have yet to work out why! i'd rather do battle with captcha. must be some money for someone who invents a better alternative!

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    1. RIGHT?! this is a goldmine! damn my years of acting training!!!!!

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    2. I'm thinking you just need to change your name on the account. For example, instead of putting in my first/last name, I put in CGCouture, because that's the abbreviation I use for my blog. It's been a year or so since I did that, so I can't remember exactly how it's set up, but I think that should work. Hope that helps!

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  14. To be completely honest, (and this is going to sound super bitchy probably, I apologize in advance) I HATE commenting on Blogger. There's no way to know if someone has replied to your comment, OpenID is a hormonal little bitch--sometimes she works and sometimes she tells you to piss off, you have to go through an extra step to find a fellow commenter's blog (it takes you to their blogger page where you then have to click on their blog link instead of just taking you there directly.....just so many little things that piss me off about it. And that doesn't even get into how much I can't stand captcha...

    I <3 Wordpress. The comments feature is awesome--it moderates every first comment by someone so you have to "allow" them, but after that it just remembers and lets it go. Plus, if you get a comment on wordpress there's a little orange comment bubble in the top of your screen when you are on any wordpress.com blog to let you know if someone has replied to you/liked a post/or whatever. HOWEVER: it doesn't seem to work quite the same on self-hosted wordpress sites (I think that's what they are called) as it does on the free ones, FYI...it doesn't seem to be consistent, but maybe that's just the way some people set up their blogs, I don't know.

    Disqus is OK. I've never had a problem with it (I signed up for a Disqus account that's tied to my wordpress account) using it on Firefox. It's not perfect, but it's still a whole lot better than standard blogger.

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    1. i'm seriously looking into wordpress, and i LOVE this extremely helpful non bitchy comment! it's so hard to tell the differences between the two platforms. love hearing both sides.

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  15. I, uh, like spam. It never gets through on my blog, but I love going in to read the comments. They're always really polite, as if they're written by a charming, well-mannered person who doesn't have the firmest grasp on English. Would I like 25 spam comments in an evening? Probably not. Then again, they say such lovely things before they offer you the miracle weight-loss berry.

    Echoing Country Girl Couture on every other count. I do not like commenting on Blogger. Ever. I cannot tell you how many times I've left really sweet, thoughtful, well-considered comments (fine, "kind of sweet, thoughtful, well-considered" comments) that either don't go through or get left anonymously. Rage. I always try at least a few times for bloggers I love, but there's almost always a new post up by the time the commenting feature has decided it likes me.

    Also, I am a robot who cannot read captchas to save her own life.

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    1. Ah, give your spammers time. It's cute at first, then the anonymous comments explode in your inbox and then they actually start GETTING THROUGH to your blog, which is embarrassing and infuriating. That's when I switched to Disqus, but I have the same probs that everyone else has talked about here. And commenting on Blogger through my iPhone is a nightmare every time (like right now) but alas, we fight on. There's no perfect solution, without switching blog platforms altogether.

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    2. i second andrea! at first you chuckle. maybe even chortle. then they multiply and you want to napalm them.

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  16. I didn't have a problem with anonymous user comments, but when I started getting 25 spam comments a day... well, anonymous user privileges went. But the spam hasn't come back. I dislike the captcha as well, and (as far as I know) have turned it off for my comments as well.

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    1. oddly enough... when i got home today, i had another 12 anon spams in my inbox. i was ready to hit that NO ANON button, but when i checked blogger, they had directed 11 of those straight to spam. that's honestly what i was used to with blogger, they were always pretty good at filtering, but for some reason lately they went crap on that blocker. could it be because i posted about it today? AM I THAT IMPORTANT???

      i can't see how.... but this evening was the first time in weeks their spam filter worked again...

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  17. Weirdly, I get a fair bit of spam too, but it never shows up on my blog. It's like Blogger whisks it away to some junkmail box somewhere. I probably did something genius entirely by accident to achieve this. I will go check out my settings.

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  18. I echo what Mrs C and Nicholas said. 99.9% of my blogger spam gets caught by the system, but I can't quite remember what I did - I'll check my settings when I'm not on my phone on a train. I hate Disqus too - apart from the annoying thing you mentioned of getting signed out all the time, it's just so UGLY and doesn't sit well with many otherwise beautiful blogs. Luckily I overcame the spammers but had a bigger problem with bitchy anonymous comments (it's a blog about sewing - why so evil?) so took the difficult decision to disable anonymous comments and require OpenID sign in. Not a perfect solution at all as it's discouraged many people from commenting, but on the plus side it means I feel more comfortable knowing that commenters are in some way traceable and can't just throw rotten tomatoes with a mask on. I too am vaguely considering moving to Wordpress but the grass is always greener...

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    1. ah, there is evil in the world, my friend, and it likes to go by the name Anonymous. it's the internet version of a black cloak and moustache.

      yeah, blogger used to catch that junk quickly, i have it set to allow any comments and catch spam on its own--but lately it's been major dropping the ball! tho when i got home tonight, it had snagged 11 spam comments. it knows i'm disappointed in its character.

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  19. The spam is really getting bad. I read them at first, after all we do get anonymous posters, but it's total nonsense. I have been trying to figure out a solution as well. Good luck,

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  20. spam is horrendous at the mo, I don't think I've ever had so much of it. some of it seems to be getting caught but others are slipping right through the net. maybe google needs to make that net bigger!!
    I hate captcha too and disqus is just hit and miss on whether it want's to play nice or not :/

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  21. I'm so glad someone else had problems with Disqus! I felt like I was some horrible person who was bad at life for not getting it to work for me. I had to settle for no anonymous comments and using OpenID, too, so I feel your pain.

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  22. Blogger seems to catch most of the spam that comes through. Some gets through occasionally though. I've recently been hit by a ton of anonymous spam comments as well. It's annoying but not really the end of the world. I just make sure to delete my spam box every day or so. I don't really understand all the hate about Blogger commenting (besides the captcha), but then again I've never used any other service so I don't really know. I like my Blogger blog. It's easy and uncluttered. I don't have any trouble leaving comments or clicking on over to other peeps blogs. Disqus is ok. Don't hate it or love it. I don't ever sign in though, even though I set up an account. I kind of agree that it's not very pretty. Is there really something better out there? I kind of feel like dealing with spam and commenting will be an issue no matter where your blog is hosted.

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  23. I really do wish Blogger would bring back word verification. I've never heard of Disqus. (I know... living in a cave probably) I see a lot of blogs that let you sign in with Google. I like that because I already have a Google account and don't have to sign up for one more thing.

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  24. I'm facing the same issue it's driving me crazy

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  25. I just have the approval needed on my blog, without the captcha.
    That way I can look at all posts and just publish or delete?
    You would get a lot more comments than myself tho.. so probably still annoying?

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    1. i always hated the "visible after approval" thing-- not that i hated the blogger for using it, but it makes me feel more like i'm taking a test than sharing my thoughts...

      which of course, depending on what's in my glass, is not always a bad thing.

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  26. eeeeeeeeeeep, okay, i love those links, but that made my head hurt.

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  27. I'm pretty happy with my wordpress (spam filter catches most everything and rarely catches anything non-spam), so I can't really comment. I don't allow anonymous commenting on my blog, though---you have to invent a name and an email address, at minimum. There might be a few people I miss out on that way, but I think not too many. I used to have comments on moderation, but I never actually ran into a situation where I didn't post the comment (aside from spam, which gets filtered) so I took that off.

    Good luck, Lady. :)

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    1. i woke up this morning to 8/15 caught spam comments on my blogger spam filter, so i've switched to registered users only. i hope that doesn't mean you have to sign away your firstborn or some shite, it was the least controlling choice after allowing anyone...

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    2. okay WHATEVER BLOGGER, that comment was me (oona) and so is this one. wordpress is calling, yo.

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  28. I'm with Amy, Askimet has worked really well for me (I hated Captcha!). Personally, I really don't like having to login as a registered user, or with my email, Twitter, or Facebook accounts. It's kind of a pain....

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  29. I thought I was the only one who tried to come up with new definitions for those great "word verification" words. At least you don't do the "aproval before pubishing" thing, which has resulted in my making many of what turn out to be silly redundant comments, since I have no idea what other people are commenting.
    Happy you got your dress form!

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  30. I was listening to the audio captcha for the hearing impaired the other night, you know, just for fun. I got a total kick/completely creeped out by it. It sounds TERRIFYING!!!

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  31. oooh, I wish I knew! for some reason I get anonymous comments that Disqus at least doesn't SHOW on my blog, but they generate an email notifying me of a comment, ON POSTS THAT DO NOT EXIST but that otherwise look exactly like my other notifications. I'm pretty over Disqus for other reasons, such as when I loaded a new template, it decided to make all my comments transparent. I GIVE UP. Hope you find a solution soon!

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  32. Hi there, if you feel up to it, you can actually customize Captcha.
    I am thinking about it as my little blog with nary a visit is attracting strange anonymous individuals who say the nicest things about my mundane fabric purchases and then want to show me boobs.
    Anyhow, here is the link : https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/customization

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    1. that's intriguing... i'm going to see if i can find screenshots of customized captchas.

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  33. Thanks for the post, I've got lots to learn about blogging. First off, getting the people from pleasantthoughts dot something to stop visiting... !

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  34. hmm lotsa options. Covered it here

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i thankya truly for taking the time to comment, i love a good conversation-- and hope you know my thanks are always implied, if not always written!