spam management
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I’ve tried all the Akismet settings to manage spam comments, but can’t seem to find a way to intercept pervasive spam, robot generated comments, and undesirable sources.
I have my Discussion settings at:
– Must fill out e-mail
– Comment must be manually approved
– Set at “strict” to discard worst and most pervasive spam
– I’ve blacklisted the most objectionable words from the most pervasive spam.I’ve tried using the setting requiring users be registered and logged in to comment, but that cut out ALL comments.
Even with those settings lots of spam comes through so I’ve initiated a system in which I manually go through all the comments and delete any that don’t have a single person’s name as the title. Then I read the remaining comments and discard any inappropriate ones that survive the single name test.
This is a tedious daily chore and 99% of all the comments I receive are robot-generated trash or otherwise inappropriate messages.
Two questions:
1) What does the “Discussion” setting requiring a user be registered and logged in mean? Do I have to install a special widget? Does it mean logged into WordPress or into our site specifically? Registered with who? Please explain.
2) Any advice on how to intercept pervasive spam comments from the same source, robot generated “bot-spam”, or comments with objectionable words (porn, sex, etc)?
I’m getting desperate and may just quit receiving comments altogether.
Our site is imaginetraveldiscover.com
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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1) What does the “Discussion” setting requiring a user be registered and logged in mean? Do I have to install a special widget? Does it mean logged into WordPress or into our site specifically? Registered with who? Please explain.
This means logged into one of the options in our comment form. We offer log in through WordPress.com, Facebook, and Twitter:
This means they have to have a valid log in with one of those three sources.
2) Any advice on how to intercept pervasive spam comments from the same source, robot generated “bot-spam”, or comments with objectionable words (porn, sex, etc)?
I just checked your comments section of your site:
https://chinookindependenttravel.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
I’m seeing a lot of ‘unspammed’ comments there. And most of those comments are actually spam. This type of totally vague commenting tries to fly under the radar so that you unspam it. But if you keep unspamming it, more will come. And every time you unspam it, you tell Akismet to let it through the spam barriers.
You can especially tell that these are spam because of the links for their websites. Almost everything I’m seeing there is some sort of spam.
You can reduce this type of spam comment by enabling the ‘must be logged in’ requirement and by not unspamming it.
We can’t stop spam comments from being submitted. What we do is put them in a Spam folder. This Spam folder works basically the same way your spam folder in your email works. After a certain amount of time, the comments there automatically get deleted. You don’t have to every touch anything in your Spam folder to make it go away.
Anything in your Spam folder is not on the front of your site. Its just there so that you can find any comments that are not actual spam.
If you’re finding a lot of comments in the main comments folder that are actually spam, try adding some keywords to your blacklist:
Here’s some more information about spam comments:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/
http://catswithmustaches.org/spam-the-not-delicious-kind/
Let me know if you have more questions!
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Many thanks Shawna,
When I use the comment form in my dashboard, does that automatically require a commenter log in with facebook twitter or WordPress?
Meanwhile I’m going through and deleting all comments (checking each one and applying bulk action to send to trash). Start fresh after that.
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When I use the comment form in my dashboard, does that automatically require a commenter log in with facebook twitter or WordPress?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean here? When you post comments from your dashboard, it doesn’t affect what your readers have to do to comment on the front of your site. Does that answer your question?
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Sorry for the confusion. What I meant is there is a standard comment form available to me when I create a new post. When I add a new post I can insert this standard comment form into my post.
If I set my discussion setting to login required, does that mean anyone wanting to use that comment form that I have inserted into my post must login to WordPress (or facebook or Twitter) in order make a comment using that form?
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Yep! That’s exactly what it means. Your comment form will look like this to logged out users:
Does that clarify things?
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Again thanks Shawna,
Yes, that helps except my comment form doesn’t look like that – it just asks for an email address but doesn’t require any login
But, I haven’t activated the login requirement in my discussion settings yet. I guess I have to activate the login requirement in my discussion settings in order for the Wprdpress/facebook/Twitter login requirement to appear in the comment form. Is that correct?
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Yep! Until you activate the login requirement, its just a form that asks for a name, email, and website. :)
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OK. I activated the login requirement in the discussion settings, then logged off from WordPress. Then I googled our site, but the form is still the same – no login requirements.
Am I doing something wrong?
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Try opening your site in an incognito or private window instead of just logging out. Here’s what I see for your comment form when I’m in an incognito Chrome window:
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Great! Just let me know if you need help with anything else, or if you have more questions about your spam or commenting settings. :)
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