Four months or so ago I found myself obliged to de-activate the word verification 'safety feature' on the Blogger comments form because it had been getting so absurdly glitchy that it was effectively preventing all commenting.
Unfortunately, the spambots seem to be getting smarter, particularly over the last few weeks (I began to wonder if the sudden inundation I was suffering wasn't somehow related to my location: how could my being in America render the blog more vulnerable to these pests??). I have often been getting 10 or 20 spam posts a day lately, and around 50 in one 24-hour period on one occasion. It was becoming mighty tedious to wade through my 'Blog Comments' folder deleting them all manually. It was also, I realised, potentially a bit of a bummer for any avid followers of the blog(s) who might have subscribed to a comment feed, and would thus be receiving all this dross too.
So, the other day I re-engaged the word verification gizmo.
I hope it's behaving itself now, and is allowing reasonably easy access to genuine commenters. Please let me know if you are experiencing any problems with this (most of my regular readers have my e-mail address).
(Not that I have many readers any more, much less commenters. The 'blog thing' is so last decade, I am told by people who are more hip than me to evolving cyber-trends. Alas, alas.)
2 comments:
It -- the new! improved! Blogger commenting interface, with or without the word-verification device -- still feels new and still feels spectacularly unimproved.
Oh, blogging. Sigh. I think I continue to get from it the things I always knew I could get from it: writing practice, a public "face," the occasional comment. But once you've had comment threads dozens of contributions in length, it just feels weird to go back to "talking to myself" mode.
On the other hand, who am I to talk? My day-job workload has suddenly perked up (over-perked, actually), which means among other things that I'm simply not keeping up with others' blogs as much as before. (Yes, I know -- most "normal" people take for granted that having a day job will interfere with their online activity. But it's an unusual condition for me.)
Yes, your regulars have gone a bit quiet of late, haven't they? I thought they would be the kind of folks who would be proof against the superficial enticements of Twitter and so on, but who knows? Let's hope it was just a summer holiday slowdown. That's been my excuse.
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