Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Follow-up on Comment About Comments


This is a short and sweet post today. More is coming later this week.

Well, as expected, my appeal for "anonymous, spam posters" went on deaf ears. I truly didn't expect any one to comply especially since they don't really read my blog posts anyway. They simply want to draw traffic from my site to theirs. Some of their sites may be valid, but some, I'm sure were to porno sites, scams and many may have been laden with spiders, worms, robots and viruses of all descriptions.

So, while I liked having my blog as open as possible to make it as easy for legitimate readers to contribute comments, I have had to tighten up the controls on the commenting process.

So, if you use "Anonymous" instead of a real name or legitimate user name, you may find your comments blocked. Additionally, I put a CAPTCHA security test on the blog. This is to ensure that a human is responding and not an Internet Bot computer sending spam or uploading viruses.

I regret any inconvenience they may cause you and I sincerely hope it's minimal at worst, but as a blog grows in popularity and in exposure and as the number of views increases, these spam bots grow incrementally and possibly exponentially. I hope this will be secure enough to eliminate this problem. I truly appreciate all legitimate comments from readers and I want the experience to be a pleasant one and the least frustrating for you.

Thanks for your understanding.

Enthusiastically,
Ed


2 comments:

Linda Sand said...

One advantage of not caring how many readers I get--I never made my site visible to the search engines. Greatly reduces the bots. You have to know somebody who sends you to my site--often me from commenting on other people's blogs. :)

Ed Helvey said...

Good point on reducing the bots, Linda. I guess I have to admit, there's a bit of ego involved in my writing. After more than 55 years of self-employment (I started very young), even though writing has been a part of everything I've done pretty much - especially during my book publisher years, though others did the writing in that situation, it's now my intent to become a good writer and actually contribute something to other people's lives. So, while this blog is not designed to be a business, it is a "voluntary" form of currently uncompensated job for me. It's both a mission and a passion for me.

Enthusiastically,
Ed