For Months now I have done a lot of thinking over many cups of coffee about comments. I have never achieved a balance on Windows to Russia. It is either comment crazy or no comments at all. So as I drink my coffee this morning and realize that I dealt with thousands and thousands of caught spam. I dealt with multiples of hate, death and destruction comments. I had a handful of decent comments. I had a bunch of cut and paste, slam the world, USA, Israel, Russia and much more comments. I had a sleaze of porn comments that got around the filters. I had hours of work just to get a handful of good comments out of the pile of crap. (See the paradox?)
If I allowed comments to run unmoderated and just post as they are presented. I would have an average of 1200 comments a day. But when these comments sell Viagra, porn, hate, love, home windows, basement repair, clothes, hats, boots, t-shirts and hundreds of other items. What good are they?
I myself very rarely leave comments anywhere in the blogging world. When I do, I mean what I say. I have just a handful of blogs to follow and they are what interest me. So I will leave a comment for them as I read their articles. I follow major news sites and see sometimes a 100,000+ comments left on an article. I realized the stupidity when I see many times the first comment left says, “I am first commenter!” Then you realize it is just a game…
Windows to Russia on any given day has 2000+ readers. That swells to many more, half the time. This number is excluded from the thousands of hits I get by spam bots, search bots and such. So for a Russian blog we are busy and I want it to stay that way. But I also realize that statistics point to the fact that less than half, of one half, of one percent of the real readers ever comment. A non blogging reader just does not comment very often. I read many articles that say 10 to 15 percent or more of your readers will comment. I will tell you, “No they do not.” Well maybe that is high percent is true if you play games yourself by commenting all over the blog world then you will get a return comment as a favor. (Is that really a comment?) Even if they try to act intelligent and leave a good comment they are still just there because they want a link. In the blogging world they all want to link to a high PR blog or site. Hence we leave comments that really have no meaning just to leave a link to our site. All in the glory and grace of the Almighty Google God… 🙁
I track and have been tracking statistics for years now. Windows to Russia has exceeded 4,000,000+ actual hits and that is climbing rapidly. I do not game Alexa, Google Page Rank or any other form of trying to play with my SEO. I also have Google ad-sense now but that is a futile effort at best on my part…
So I have reached a decision after many months of fighting with all forms of comments. I have tired of spending hours everyday sifting through thousands of comments. This is a time consuming process that takes away from the main issue. Posting to “Windows to Russia…”
So I have gone to Google and used its Friend-connect system. Google is very anti-spam and will help curtail tons of spam in that fact alone. The WordPress comment system is a spam magnet and I do not like that. In fact every comment system that I have used internal or external has been a spam magnet with WordPress. The spammers are better than the controllers and they get by almost anything…
So all the old comments are still there. Except the WordPress comment box has been removed. In its place is now the Google Friend-connect system. So now you must sign up and you still will be moderated. I will also put a CAPTCHA in place if need be. To stop spam that is still getting through…
Other words if you are human and you really have something to say. If you are not here just to leave a link. Then we want you to express it. At that point I can give attention to a real comment and maybe something constructive will come out of it…
Comments became a deficit and a hindrance…
Windows to Russia!
- I Personally Simply Hate Spam Comments… (windowstorussia.com)
- Coffee and The Spam King Country… (windowstorussia.com)
- Ukraine posting from McDonalds… (windowstorussia.com)
- Coffee and Gone is 2010 and Hello 2011… (windowstorussia.com)
- Drugs – A Big Problem in Russia For The Children… (windowstorussia.com)
- Back Home in Russia – Safe and Sound… (windowstorussia.com)
- Learn Some Russian Words: From Svet! (windowstorussia.com)
- Miracles Do Happen With Google… (Sitelinks) (windowstorussia.com)
- Come to Russia you can Read Some of the Signs! (windowstorussia.com)