I would like to offer a comment mea culpa! I got a few comments over the past few weeks about how I was overly protective of my comments. The truth is a lot dirtier than fiction. After the amazing throwdown death match that I did for Disqus Vs Intense Debate Vs ReCaptcha Vs WordPress Comment System Die I sort of did not delete all of the different comment systems on my blog.
Why would I do that? What would possess people to go through the ten rings of hell and back just to leave a comment on my blog. The answer is quite easy and pretty darn stupid! I did not realize that I had missed some spam filters.
Apparently I added a few too many spam filters for my own good. A few people have commented that I had way too many filters. Every time I looked at my plugins, I thought I got all of them, but now. Now I am sure that all extraneous comment spam filters are gone…I hope!
There is definitely a lesson to learn from doing this type of throw-down death match of different commenting systems. Watch your plugins. I apparently was getting a little too plugin happy! This is good advice, so you know what is on your account, and also so you can minimize how much memory your plugins take on your blog.
At a minimum I now have juicy content for a sequel to Social Networking Blog Duh List 10 Times Over. In the end it just proves that the more mistakes you make the more you learn. That is how I am so erudite! I make more mistakes in a week than most people do in a year!Plus, it brings my pending stratospheric ego back in check with reality, so I can constantly improve this site for everyone who read this blog on a regular basis. Thanks to those 5 dedicated readers! We have quintupled in the past year. (Note: If no one else laughs at this, know that I am crying from laughter at my own jokes).
So, now that we have that straightened out, I would like to wish you a happy Monday! Feel free to comment on this post or others without the unscrutinizing eye of my many spam filter plugins. The only spam filter that is there right now is recaptcha. All others are simply a comment mea culpa of the past.
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Hey Andy, how many spam filters did you actually have? LOL
The 10 rings of hell is a pretty strong way of putting it :p. Glad you got it fixed up, I would not look forward to jumping through these hoops to post a comment. Glad to see you are listening to your followers feedback.
Learning from your mistakes is a very important thing, I am sure you will not make it again. 🙂
BW
Brandon,
Not as many anymore! 🙂
Fear not, you do not have to jump through the 10 rings of hell anymore.
Andy
I can’t get past my own aversion to captcha’s and other ways bloggers use to keep the spam at bay. I have the default spam filter already on my blog template, but other than that, the only spam filter I use is a conditional captcha… i.e. I only have to approve someone once, and after that his or her comments are accepted. So far it’s working for me.
Willena Flewelling
Willena,
To each their own! I was getting 30-40 spam comments per day without a captcha. It saves me from wasting my day with spam.
Andy
Hey Nathan if its any consolation the commenting experience went fine. I like you have had my share of the comment plug in problem. One time was a thread issue and then comment luv likes to break about every other upgrade. But it’s all apart of the game.
Steve
Steve,
Definite consolation! Glad I am not the only one with all of the challenging comment problems! Thanks!
Andy
Hi Andy
You should see what I went through when I first started. The blunder in the my comments sections. Luckily for me I had help from one of the TSA members at an early stage and thought me how to recognize spams.
If it makes you feel any better, you are not alone.
Irene,
I do feel better! Thanks!
Andy
Whoever invented captcha was a miserable, mean, low-down, dirty, rotten @#!$%$! and I wish him, her, or the entire team of morons that developed it all the frustration they can barely handle every day for the rest of their lives.
On average it takes me 3-4 tries to read the stupid things. I don’t care how effective they are, they are just plain annoying. Anyone’s day can be suddenly ruined by running across one of these vile creations.
I don’t care if you get spam on your blog. I don’t care if I get spam on mine. Just delete it. Do anything but force people to suffer through trying to read barely legible gobbledy-gook just to bestow the honor of their opinion on you.
As I reach the end of this rant, I can see the dreaded captcha awaits. Here goes…
P.S. I only wish I could share this particular captcha with you. There’s no way in hell I’m getting this one
Dave,
I am sorry that you believe I just let the spam go through until it is deleted. I understand your concern, but this helps me keep the comment stream clean from worthless posts. I did manual deletes for a few months, and discovered that I was not doing a great job. Plus, I do not want to waste time deleting comments when I could be doing something more important.
Andy
I hope you took that comment in the nature it was intended. I do really hate captchas, but I just went at it in my version of a Denis Leary over the top out of control rant. I think it’s funny.
Anyway, I wasn’t implying anything about you or your blog. Just blowin’ off a bit of steam about captchas. I suppose if I could discern exactly what they want. Should I include the spaces? Is this one case sensitive? Is that an o or an 0? It truly drives me crazy.
But c’mon Andy. At least give me kudos for a well worded rant. That took a while. And some effort. 🙂
P.S. Believe it or not, after I wrote that rant I got the captcha on the first try. But I know it was just toying with me til next time…
Dave,
Definitely a well worded rant! I completely understand the need to blow off steam with a well word rants. Check out about 20% of my blog posts for an example.
Andy
I don’t know to say it. I guess all of us did a mistake. But it helps to make a renew and be careful for the second time around. I may now expressed my thought about your post.
Santhy,
Thanks for you thoughts about the mistake!
Andy