Comment spam

I am fairly often asked what I get out of running this blog.

Probably the thing I enjoy the most is the comments. It’s not suprising but is nonetheless true that it’s incredibly rewarding to get thoughtful commentary on topics you care about, from people halfway round the world (or even just down the hall). And I’ve had more of that than I ever expected.

There is, however, a downside to the comments. I started getting comment spam shortly after starting this blog. The idea is that spammers put “comments” on the blog, usually something trivial like “Good reading!” together with a URL for their product, in order to improve their Google pagerank. Just as fast, I try to delete the comments.

While less odious than the nitwit who spammed the Olympic diving (via DFL), it’s gotten old deleting a dozen comments a day, even using Jay Allen’s terrific spam blacklist plugin.

As a result, I’ll now close off further commenting on posts after a month or so, unless the comments are still active. Old comments will still be viewable, it just won’t be possible to add to them.