I have a simple policy on comments that I receive for posts. As long as the language is not abusive (I mean really abusive) and the comment is original and germain to the topic, I will publish that comment. As such, I probably publish all but a very small few that I receive. I appreciate thoughtful comments regardless of whether I agree with them or not.
As such, I wanted to share an example of when I don’t publish the comment. Can you tell me what is wrong with this comment from another Realtor?
“Nice Blog for Real Estate People”
The answer is that there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with it. However, it’s because it is generic that makes me wonder. That’s why I Google comments like these verbatim. If you do that with this one, you will find several other real estate blogs (ten, in fact including Realblogging.com, FutureofRealEstateMarketing.com, OCRealEstateVoice.com and other great blogs) that have published this seemingly innocuous comment.
All it takes is for the comment to even reference the article in some way and I will publish it. However, because comments like these are so obvious for what they are (comments posted by people paid to do so for the sole purpose of getting links), I don’t publish them.
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I grow so weary of comment spam and paid comments that I often ponder just closing comments completely.
But I like the interaction good comments provide, so I keep them open.
Great tip to Google comments. And don’t delete them, send them to spam (assuming here you are using Aksimet as a spam blocker). If enough people will do this, the spam filters will “learn” about these people. Of course when they do, they just move to another IP address and continue their assault.
Jay Thompson´s last blog post..From the Idiot Files: Use an Electronic Lockbox!
We get so many spam posts on both our blog and forum! I think some of it is automated! I agree with you as long as the commentor is actually reading the post and adding value by giving their opinion it should be displayed.
Maybe try and us a CAPTCHA to weed out the auto-posters and it should lower the amount of fake comments! Just a thought.
Cody Sperber
KleverInvestor.com
Thank you for the post! I grow weary of generic and automated blog postings and agree with Cody that maybe including a CAPTCHA on the site would help at least lower the automated commenting.
Comment spam is an ongoing problem. I still prefer to moderate comments on my blog, it is a little more work, but I’m able to keep out the obvious spammers.
Tina Fountain´s last blog post..1108 Waterford Green Point Marietta, Georgia 30068
Tina-
I agree. I do moderate the comments here as I don’t think it is appropriate to reward comment spam. I will let just about anything go so long as it is pertinent to the topic in the post and clearly not generic so that I can find the comment elsewhere.
Dave Lorti