With the introduction of Wordpress 2.0 and Movable Type 3.2, I have been able to open up my comments completely in all of my blogs. They are that good. This post is in response to a comment made by Tiff in Five Plus One Conditions For Being a Blog. Please refer to How to Protect Against Comment Spam and Trackback Spam for more information.
Tiff said, “I’m going to disagree about commentability, if “commentability” means “availability of comment form.” I don’t think willingness to open yourself up to an avalanche of comment spam is a necessary attribute of a blog. I agree that it’s preferable to have commenting capabilities on the blog (I hate when they don’t), but a blogger who values his or her time too much to manage the flood of spam is still a blogger. I disallow trackbacks for the same reason- I’ve got a good comment spam solution, but there’s no way to port it to trackbacks, and I was getting several hundred a day. Who has time for that?”
And I responded, “I am sorry, but it actually is. I don’t know what you’re using, but with WordPress 2 and Movable Type 3.2, there are amazing spam blockers and I have opened all of my blogs to open comments. Also, that is the reason why comments are the +1. What blog service or tool do you use?”
Comments (2)
Did you actually read the part of my comment when I said that I have a good comment spam solution, which is why I have open comments?
I use Wordpress 2, but I’m uninterested in having my blog “phone home” to Akismet every time someone comments, so I use Elliot Back’s HashCash, which rocks and is nearly 100% accurate. But the test Back employs isn’t suitable for trackbacks, and so I spend an unreasonable amount of time managing trackback spam on all my assorted blogs, which is why I’ve given up open trackbacks. Trackback was always spam waiting to happen- an automated way to get your link on my blog without my assent or approval. So I track my Technorati cosmoses (cosmii?) and referrer logs and try to wade through the splogs on THOSE to see who’s linking to me.
And don’t even talk to me about MT- I gave up that thing when my archives got so long that MT couldn’t rebuild them without timing out halfway through (you’d think it could stand up to more than three years of archives…). I went dynamic with WP and never looked back.
I should clarify- MT was timing out on my personal blog, whose archives go back to January 2002 (after MT lost the late 2001 archives). MPOJ clearly hasn’t been around that long.