Spam Increase

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  libertyssong · Member · Mar 14, 2012 at 4:30 pm

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  Over the past week, my spam has increased from 2-3 daily to 20-30 daily. The stats indicate views ranging between 5-20 daily. Question: Does spam constitute views to the site. Additionally, if so, why are they not reflected in the stats. How do I limit again the number of spams without having comments limited or blocked for older posts.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  timethief · Member · Mar 14, 2012 at 4:52 pm

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  Spam does not consitute a visit to your site and is not reflected in your stats. This page > Settings > Discussion
  Discussion settings is where you set up defaults for comments.
  As you have found we can also override the default settings and enable or disable future comments on any post or page.

  Over 80% of all comments submitted every day to .wordpress.com blogs are spam. Morover, the majority of all “information” on the internet is spam. Those are realities we face. See tellyworth ie. Staff says in this thread > https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/akismet-issues?replies=15#post-438186

  Note that you have complete control comment moderation. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderation If your blog is public others can, of course, read it. They can submit comments but you can Moderate all comments and choose which ones to approve or not.
  For trolls, you can “blacklist” them at Settings > Discussion toward the bottom of that page. Enter their email address, their username, and if they included it, their website. That will automatically send them to moderation so that their comments do not appear on the blog. Do note though that if they are determined, they can use a different email address or username to get around that. Also, do not put their IP address in the blacklist. IP addresses are no longer unique, and you might end up blocking legitimate visitors. Also, all they would have to do is go to a wi-fi hot spot, or connect via a different ISP and they could get around that.
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist

  One other thing I would suggest is to set your blog so that first time commenters are held in moderation till approved, then from that point forward they will not need approval. Settings > Discussion. The next step on that of course is to set it so that all comments are held in moderation until approved. That way you are in control, and they might just get tired and go elsewhere after a while.

  I recommend all bloggers scroll down on this page to “5 things every blogger should know about spam” and read what’s there.

  re: don’t discard spam on older posts
  Software has no idea what “older articles” means unless we define it bu insertiung a number into that setting. If we do not want to have spam automatically deleted by Akismet on on older articles with “older articles” being defined by the number we place in that setting then we do not check-mark that box and we do not enter a number into that setting.

  As an example, if you only want articles to accept comments for 30 days you would check the box and type 30 into the text field. http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#other-comment-settings

  If you don’t enable that setting then you will have more spam comments in your moderation queque to check every day.