So apparently a Japanese or Asian spam company of some sort targeted the site over the last week. That led to over 200 spam comments, saying “I hope your site live forever” or “thank you so much, this great” then promoting some product. That product usually had something to do with “male enhancement” or something terrific like that.
Pretty hilarious.
After glancing at my email box, I admit to being temporarily excited. I thought our incredible site led people to actually post. We were fomenting discussion! We’d finally made it! Alas, then I saw the actual text of the comments.
We have yet to make it.
The point is, we’ve never had an issue with anyone posting obscene, mean, irrelevant or otherwise unnecessary comments before. We think the comments have been terrific.
We want more comments! More I tell you!
This latest episode changes things a wee bit. One of the guys at OSL will now briefly look at the comment and “approve” it first. This is just to avoid more spam like we got over the weekend. We hope you understand.
This also allows us to address commenting in general. We really want to start a dialogue on the site, and maybe we’ve not been doing a good enough job. Any suggestions to increase the commenting? Please do continue to read, comment, and suggest new ideas. The Blazer season is starting to gear up soon, and thus so will our content. It’ll be an onslaught! Thanks for reading, and keep coming back for more, and please continue to comment. Unless you are an Asian spam-generating company. Go ahead and keep that to yourselves then.
However, “We hope this site live forever” as well.
Does it give you the option to use one of those decoding things when people comment? You know where they making you type what it says in the box. If it does you should use it, then you don’t have to check every comment before it gets posted and you don’t have to worry about fake posts
I’m not the commenting type, but you guys are doing a great job.
As one of those bloggers aspiring for a bigger audience, just thought I’d suggest something to help with the comment issue.
I see you’re running WordPress. I would recommend enabling Akismet. It will catch 99% of your spam and does a fantastic job. I used to literally get hundreds per day for a post I did on Autzen Stadium and it caught every one of them. Considering I once had to sort through 12,000 spam comments that infected the site, it is beyond valuable.
You can get the plugin at http://akismet.com/ and an API key to run it at http://en.wordpress.com/signup/