Lee,

I find this a huge challenge as well. I tend to delete anything that doesn't link to a blog or that links to an obvious e-commerce site.

Another big challenge is obvious self-promoting comments. Such as "well your way is good but if you just look at my website I have explained a better system for all of this." It doesn't seem like the real motive is to engage in a dialog. I tend to e-mail those folks directly because I feel bad about sending their comments to oblivion without warning.

I wrote about this a while back, and used that same word: 'insidious'. I'm seeing this approach a lot more, and other folks regularly complain about it.

I can't imagine how this spamming strategy is cost effective, but I suppose labour still comes pretty cheap enough in parts of the developing world.

It's particularly evil, because it sucks a lot more of your attention per message. You have to make these judgment calls, and that takes brain cycles and time.

Can I interest you in our ebook? There's a discussion of commenting...

Just kidding.

I have not known the Akismet yet, but these robots make me angry all the time!

That's why everyone should make their name their brand - then you get inbound links in comments and it looks more natural. ;)

More seriously, the economic motivation is the root of the problem. I find it almost as frustrating to write something and get a response along the lines of "We at Company A, found at URL would never do what you describe here. We have a strong company policy. If you'd like to see for yourself, come try out our site."

I get comments like that anytime I complain about something. It could be argued that the company is "adding to the conversation", but if it looks like an advertisement...

As long as there's an economic motivation to get links, people are going to try and get links.

How's this for a solution... don't publish anyone's links. You are being too friendly and there will always be a way to take advantage of that. You could try not being so friendly.

My initial instinct is to be fairly lenient.

I think it's OK if someone engages with depth on a topic I've created, possibly sparking more debate in the process AND wants to put a link to their blog or company site or whatever. I get something of value, they get something of value.

Conversely, as shown by Sunblock, there is really no value to you with that comment and it is at those kinds of posts that a no tolerance policy should be directed.

Hi Lee,

I can totally appreciate where you're coming from. It must be tough having to sift through all the comments you get.
However I'd urge you to please reread the comment I posted on your post on the Free is the Future at http://www.commoncraft.com/free-future.

I was kind of taken back that you had such a strong negative reaction to my comment about the value of providing free samples in a business.

But what I was confused about... were you making a judgments call on the sincerity of my comment?
Just ask my friends, family, clients, etc... I am VERY much so human!

Or were you simply deciding that you have an issue with people having a URL field available when readers post a comment on your blog?

If you find the URL to be the main issue, why not simply remove the URL field on your Comment posting form?

To draw an offline analogy...
If I were writing a letter to the editor (like a blog comment) to a consumer-focused magazine, I'd sign it with just my name.

If I were writing a letter to the editor (like a blog comment) to a B2B-focused magazine/publication (like yours), I'd sign it with both my name and company name.

Obviously, these are all policy decisions that you need to make for your own company and blog/publication.

But at the same time, I'd caution you to avoid lumping all people into one bucket... especially publicly labeling someone's business as suspicious, as you're likely to offend someone who sincerely wanted to participate in your dialog.

Joshua Feinberg
(Company Name/URL withheld because it seems like you're unsure about which way to go.)

I just had this problem yesterday. Akismet has some of them marked as spam, however, others get through by appearing so normal. It's hard to tell.

I feel that if it's on topic, I will let it through, but I'm sure I'll get to the point you are at where the comments are too numerous to even allow one of the jerks to be posted.

Just look at it this way - by posting about this and getting the word out, you have given the spammers something more to think about. :-)

I love your blog even though I am not a regular commenter.

~Roxanne~

first, what is the purpose of the 'homepage' input box? and the 50 questions that follow.

also, why not just make people sign up for accounts before they can post a comment?

the biggest problem is that the 'homepage' and 'url' terminology used in most of these comment forms is ambiguous, at best. semantically, it's about as meaningful as tagging technology - that is, not at all.

there are myriad ways to deal with this situ, though. first, is the above 'definition' stuff. but after that, how about requiring a certain number of comments fomr a user before that user's 'homepage' link url is shown and hotlinked? same concept as feature already built-into wordpress - just tweak it a bit. the 'homepage' snippet in the comments template would just check a flag in the db for whether that user is legit or not, etc.

for me, i throw in whatever url i happen to be pimping at the moment. should that be allowed? you own your blog - make up some rules.

I installed Akismet in March 2006 and so far it has protected me from 200,000 pieces of crap. I just deleted a comment that was rather pertinent, but the URL was a link farm and the e-mail was a *.ru address that looked suspicious. I sent an e-mail to the person and the message bounced, so I deleted the comment.

If you want to join the conversation on my blog, you have to be a real person with a real e-mail. If your website is a shill, I'll decide if you get published, based on the validity of your comment.

BTW, I don't use captchas and don't like them.

I don't get a huge volume of comments so dealing with them isn't much hassle. I tend to delete the obviously spam-like ones but there is one type that has me baffled:

It's an obvious spam comment but the link points back to the post the comment is on. What is the benefit in that for the spammer (it's not me spamming myself!) or is it just spam-farm gone wrong!

Hey Lee

For me, it comes down to assessing the motive. Does this person want to talk and spark a dialogue -- or do they think I'm a gateway to providing their product/service with credibility and/or link love?

If the link goes back to the type of site that allows free comment, I'd consider publishing the comment (even if the sites is plastered with adwords) -- unless it's one of the nasty blog feed farms cropping up.

If the link a commenter leaves is to an e-tail or overtly promotional site and/or one that does not provide the ability to continue a dialogue, I nuke it.

Cheers!

KerryJ

I agree this is highly annoying, but the upside is that we're in control.

What I've noticed lately is spam blogs grabbing my content and links, attributing it to someone else for it, then adding a "Check out this interesting article, blah blah..." before quoting me wholesale.

I can't control that, nor can I really affect any sort of change around it. Boo.

Hey, this is your work, your time, your site and the spam it attracts. Do as you please, your readers and posters will make their own decision. Thank you for making your policy clear.
The link I include today is not of a homepage of mine (don't have even a blog) but to let you know Commoncraft is listed on Guy Kawasaki's Alltop (beta). Congrats.

I'm seeing this on a journalism forum I moderate.

Just today, I exposed a spammer who posted two innocuous-looking comments, then a fairly obvious one pimping a service.

Here's the link... feel free to poke around and tell me if I was off-base.

http://openline.medialine.com/showthread.php?t=17279

I have rank denial enabled on my site, but they don't seem to care - or bother to read the notice.

One thing I've been trying on some of my sites is to remove language such as "email this comment" from your comment form. I've heard that spammers do searches on obvious commenting strings - try googling that phrase and you'll see that this site comes up number one.

Hi Lee,

I haven't faced this problem yet, since I use comment moderation and I only allow comments that I've read and considered not a spam.

But, what can we do , man? Whatever we create, always will appear somebody to do almost the same, in a bad way, tough.

Thanks for sharing this. We haven't had this problem so far on our GM blogs, but it's interesting to know this is happening.

I often go to different blogs that may have posts about GM and comment on the company, but I'm very up front about what I'm doing (i.e. ID myself as a GM employee, etc.)

If a commenter's URL isn't obviously a site connected with that individual, I think it's worth categorically deleting the links.

"Comment spam" is an OK term in the sense that it's a shorthand way to describe a whole swath of undesirable behavior in commenting systems. But, I think one of the reasons this issue you're dealing with is a bit tricky is that it's about defining self-promotion. And, you are dealing with the temptation people may feel to use your commenting system more for self-promotion than for making a real contribution to a post or earlier comment.

So, for example, I think that you should check-out my blog post on Social Sites and Self-Promotion that links to an interesting resource relevant to this topic.

Although, I intend that link to be helpful and relevant to this discussion, it's also self-promoting (in the Google page rank sense, if not otherwise). And, potentially, if I am even unconsciously contributing for myself rather than for you and your readers, that's going to degrade the quality of your site.

What's happening on some popular social sites is that the moderators are pushing the line way back on self-promotion--they are really discouraging it and trying to stop all kinds of forms of it, for the sake of connection / conversation between the participants.

And, I think that you might need to think of your policy here in similar terms: delete any comment that's not obviously being made for the sake of connection / conversation, and/or at least remove the links. Basically, you might want to ask people to really try to avoid linking to anything that might be considered self-promoting.

Thanks for this! As a PR student blogger, I'm practically BEGGING for comments and visibility. But this post presents the downside of comments - that ultimately, your posts can be used as a vehicle for someone else's promotion. Thanks for keeping us aware!

Has anyone tried using this to thwart the blog spammers (blammers?)

WordPress has a document about nofollow. Admittedly, this same document mentions that it might cause more spam.

Double-edge sword, I guess.

I was on a webdev forum where a poster would solicit folks to get comments posted on certain blogs - only for approved, human crafted like you are seeing. It is definitely a business/game to these guys. Maybe you need to outsource comment moderation on the subtle edge cases as well :)

The "nofollow" attribute in links tells search engines not to follow the link. It doesn't stop spam blasts, but in the cases Lee describes, it would allow him to keep the on-topic comments while being sure that names and links like "Phone Cards" and "Computer Consultants Kit" do not give the commenter any link love from search engines.

It was never intended to stop blast comment spammers, it's intended for situations precisely like this: so that if someone does get an ad link into a comment, even in an otherwise useful post, the search engines will not reward it.

This post was about Lee deleting some comments because he assumed the only reason they left the comments was for page rank love. "nofollow" eliminates the page rank love, so it doesn't hurt to leave them in place. Less agonizing, more productivity.

I think you are confusing self promotion with spam. When someone is asked for their homepage, many people will put a URL, usually one that benefits them. If the comment is obvious spam then mark it as spam.

However, if someone takes the time to make a comment based on your subject matter (and a positive one at that) what is the harm? Are you afraid of giving another blog/site/person a boost? It seems everyone wants a lot of people to take the time to read their blog, to make comments, all out of the goodness of their heart...making YOUR blog better. But if they add their link in their post, you take offense to it. Seems a tad selfish to me.