Stop spam but don't hurt your visitors

Filed in archive Spam on November 13, 2006

Lorelle, that wonderful blog blogger, has done her best to remind us what is blogging all about: writing and getting comments on our writings. Fearing of spam we have made it as difficult as possible for spam-scripts to plague our comment areas, but with doing so we have also managed to discourage legit readers from leaving their response.

Lorelle thinks that this way spammers in fact win:

"Too often they win by forcing us to make it more difficult for our readers to comment on our blogs. We punish our readers by putting up road blocks and security fences, forcing them to jump through hoops to leave a comment on our blog posts. Fear and the hassles of comment spam is strangling the joy out of the conversation that makes blogs successful and distinctive from websites."

I couldn't agree more. But what to do?

Lorelle says all she needs is a bit of Askimet, a drop of two of Bad Behavior and a dash of Spam Karma. She swears it works like a charm, so do try it out.