Captain's Quarters Blog


« Romney Steps In Where Kerry Fears To Tread | Main | Iranians: Maybe They Just Dig Photography »

June 29, 2004
Comment Moderation Enabled

As I wrote this weekend, I have upgraded to Movable Type 3.0 for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons was to enable comment moderation to combat spam. A significant amount of my blog time has been spent in updating my MT-Blacklist profile and in deleting comment spam attacks as they come in different forms. I'd much rather spend my time writing and responding to real comments and e-mails from CQ's readers. In order to accomplish this, I need your help in maintaining some semblance of order around here.

Movable Type 3.0 integrates with Typekey, a validation service that allows blogs to identify commenters and allow them automatic, immediate posting of comments. It's free and only requires a username and a valid e-mail address, and you can even specify that the e-mail address does not get passed to the blog when you comment. I get no other information about you, and while Typekey builds a user profile for you, you decide how much, if any, of the profile to fill out. One Typekey registration is all you need for all MT blogs, not just Captain's Quarters, and as more bloggers move to v3.0, you will see comment moderation more often than not.

So what's the benefit? I can ban abusive users immediately, and spammers can't access my comments at all. Most CQ readers know that I never ban people for disagreeing with me -- heck, I love debate, and some of my best readers hardly ever agree with what I write. I only get rid of the crap that gets dropped on here from people pushing their porn sites, or Viagra, or home financing options. No one's paying me to carry their advertising, and I resent it as much as I find most of their products and services distasteful. I recently had a rash of some extremely vile r*pe and inc*st spams posted on my site. My family reads this blog, for Pete's sake!

For the next couple of weeks, I will have light comment moderation enabled, and after that, I may have to restrict the site to Typekey-enabled commenters only, if that doesn't stop the spam deluge. I'm not trying to inconvenience people, but the waste of time and bandwidth has become too much for me to ignore. If you have questions or comments, feel free to post them here or e-mail me for clarification. I appreciate your help!

Please remember: Typekey-enabled commenters automatically have their comments approved!

UPDATE: I put the link for the registration page instead of Typekey's home page, which oddly doesn't provide that link themselves. Corrie in Itasca notified me of the problem -- thanks!

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at June 29, 2004 7:01 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is



Design & Skinning by:
m2 web studios





blog advertising



button1.jpg

Proud Ex-Pat Member of the Bear Flag League!