Twice in the last month, I've woken up in the morning to find that someone during the night has made a severe violation of my commenting rules, and because I was asleep, it was up for hours. There have been about a dozen times in which someone has made a serious rules violation during the day, and I've caught it quickly. There have been a couple of dozen times in which a spam comment has made it past Blogger and had to be deleted.
I suppose I should be grateful that for 16 years, I've only had to turn on comment moderation a few times. But because spam and rules violations have become so prevalent more recently, I don't have any choice but to turn on comment moderation permanently. That means that I will have to click a link to approve any comment before it appears. As you can imagine, during certain times of day, this delay will be considerable.
Blogger alas offers none of the following tools, all of which would solve or partially solve the situation:
- The ability to turn on moderation only during certain times of day.
- The ability to designate multiple people as comment moderators without giving them administrative access to the entire blog.
- The ability to turn on moderation only for non-registered users.
- The ability to specify my own keywords for accepting or rejecting a comment.
- The ability to hold comments with links.
I know there are other commenting options, but I'm reluctant to explore them given the 16 years of comment history that we have using Blogger's native tools. Nonetheless, I will continue to explore possibilities.
In the meantime, I beg you not to make the comment delay an issue. Please continue to offer your thoughts about these games as your normally would, and rest assured I will post them as soon as I can.
Sorry to hear that some recidivist dimwit is making comment moderation necessary after 16 years.
ReplyDeleteIt's more than one, alas.
DeleteI was wondering what the reason for permanent comment moderation was. It's indeed sad this has become necessary as it breaks the flow of discussions and immediate reactions especially for those outside of your timezone (plus probably leads to several commenters covering the same ground), but given what you mention and the lack of alternative options, I understand it's necessary.
DeleteFingers crossed these idiots soon tire of not seeing their comments here anymore and move on, so we can go back to the way things were. Not holding my breath, but one can always hope.
Are you getting a slew of AI comments as well? I haven't seen them in the actual comments section so I imagine they are getting picked up by Blogger's spam filter, but it's a new thing I noticed on my own blog since the end of last year.
ReplyDeleteI still mostly get the traditional spam comments that are obvious to anyone like "I must thank you for the efforts you have put in penning this site. I am hoping to see the same high-grade content from you in the future as well."
But now I also get comments that superficially look like real comments to the actual post itself, but there's something a bit off about them and once you see that the username has a link to a site it's obvious spam. Things like this: "That’s interesting about Masaya still working on games after V. I remember hearing rumors about the Dreamcast version being quite different, it’s cool to see it on Wonderswan." This doesn't provide much in the way of substance but it is a legitimate reaction that someone could have to the post.
I use wordpress, and I think one of the extensions has the option to make anyone's first post to the site require approval -- apparently these spam comments are hoping I will approve their first one then they can freely spam after that.
I don't think I've been getting those, unless they're so well-crafted that I can't tell the difference.
DeleteWordpress in particular has had a bunch of those for a long time. They usually sneak in long after conversation on a thread has ceased. But they are generally innocuous. I assume Chet's main issue is with more Hitlery ones, or the like.
DeleteThe Collection Chamber is on Blogger as well and I've seen quite a few AI comments there, so maybe it depends on settings. Or the nature of the respective comment section - as Gerry Quinn mentions, they're often on entries where the commenting hasn't been ongoing for a while and usually seem harmless except for their link spamming.
DeleteHowever, they make the comment sections messier if you want to read up on older entries and have to mentally filter them out all the time.
If "The ability to turn on moderation only for non-registered users." would really solve the violation issues, then I guess most of us commenters would gladly register. A lot of us live in different time zones, so we might also assist with the moderation, if you are open to that as well.
ReplyDeleteI figured something was up. Thanks for clarifying the issue. Sad to hear this has been happening after so many years of good manners
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's a traitor in our middle :P
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to see it had to come to that, but this community feels more than vital enough to survive a bit of necessary gatekeeping. Hopefully a more convenient option surfaces at some point!
ReplyDeleteMy sympathies but it's an issue across all the internet. My personal thought is that aside from foul language or people trying to sell something or divert us to another site, the big hate I have is the flaming wars where attacks get personal, ie Person A says something, then Person B says horrible things about Person A and insists they have no right to speak. I´m a big commenter on many sites and this is an impossible thing to stop but it gets very hurtful.
ReplyDeleteOh I missed the drama again!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if registering can help filtering a bit, please do so. Again this is your hobby, it should not take so much of your head space, so personally I am ok with any quick solution you want. I know many people across the blogs, wordpresses and substacks of the world that decided to disable all comments completely as their experience is that every post will have someone commenting in bad faith just to ridicule something, or to instigate what in the old times we called flame wars. We are just too many on the internet nowadays.
It feels very weird to have the auto-moderation turned on at this time, of all times, when the games in question are genuinely nice and inoffensive, the summer is outside, and World Cup gives people some pressure release valve.
ReplyDeleteyeah but heatwave
DeleteJust wanted to voice my support for Chet - delays in comments is sad but fully understandable in this case. Here's hoping that Blogger will introduce some extra moderation options, though!
ReplyDeleteFor what it’s worth, your blog is one of the few places I’ve seen that isn’t buried in spam. Having a delay is well worth it to me - I enjoy reading the comments almost as much as the main posts.
ReplyDeleteCompletely understand, and have no issue with it. Whatever makes your life maintaining this awesome space intact easier. The internet is becoming a shittier place by the minute... or maybe I'm just getting old...
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely have not been much better; one just needs to open up the usenet archives of the turn of the century to recall all the spam and shitposting.
DeleteEnLaRgE yOUr PeNiS, anyone?
I spent a lot of time on the Internet of yore, and I do not think it is worse now.
DeleteThere's a lot of advertising, but it is rarely as intrusive as full-screen adult pop-ups (or, worse, pop-under) with sound. There's spam, but it is usually far less offensive and infectious as it was in the past. There's trolls, but few use the sort of shock images that once were common. I've Seen Things that nobody should see, entirely because people used to think it was funny to trick people into looking at it.
"I've Seen Things that nobody should see, entirely because people used to think it was funny to trick people into looking at it."
DeleteRick Astley videos?