Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Reminder: commenting in About Translation

I've just deleted a comment that didn't even pretend to be about the post it purportedly commented: it was just a crappy ad for some crappy product or other.

Just to be clear: everyone is free to comment here. I won't delete comments because they contradict or even attack something I write. I don't mind strong language, and if you are not politically correct, fine with me. If your (cogent) comment contains a link to your web page, so be it: I have no problem with it.

However, if your comment is of the "Nice post! For a really excellent whatever check our website" variety, either try to articulate why your whatever should interest the readers of that specific post, or don't comment: your comment will be deleted as soon as I see it.

Also, if you are a translation company, you are very welcome to comment here, but if it looks like the sole purpose of your comment is to drive readers to your website, I will probably delete your comment (again, I won't delete your comment if it has something to say about the post to which it is attached).

On the other hand, sometimes comments are not displayed immediately. That might happen for two reasons: if the comment is to an older post, I need to approve it before it is displayed (the reason for this is that I found that most comment spam goes to older posts, not newer ones); the second reason is if Blogger's spam filter judges it as spam: the filter is not perfect, and sometimes it quarantines legitimate comments; in that case I will have to rescue the comment from the filter and approve it, before it is published.

8 comments:

  1. Could not agree more, dear Riccardo. We find it appalling and unethical when others try to take advantage of our hard work by promoting their products on our blog. We also welcome comments, controversial or not, but not comments-barely-disguised-as-ads.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with you. I have a same problem with cmy blog. I also delete comments when after only "Nice post" comes some kind of advertise for another website, usually not even connected to linguistics or translation. Spam filter can cause problems, because it can make mistakes when marking comments for spam. But, I think that your readers will not get mad if you're somewhat late with approving their comments.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shivakumar,

    I do admire your chutzpah: yes, you did clearly read the post, agreed with me,

    "Yah yah, the spam wave within blogs is growing bigger... I can only say that I think too it is not fair to post some irrelevant comments for advertising purposes only, be it from translation agencies or anyone else. If you include a link in a comment, please do at least take your time to read the relevant article."

    and, apparently, you did it all for the purpose of adding a link to your translation agency (the words "translation agencies" in your post were a link to a translation agency - yours, I imagine).

    Your post was caught by blogger spam filter, and there it remains.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, I like your way of tracking comments to your blog. I also do that in my blog I delete spamming comments who only wants to advertise in my site. Anyway, it is really need to filter the comments before approve it.

    -seff-

    ReplyDelete
  5. Comment spam isn't new, but the volume has reached new heights. Some years back, I used SpamKarma to block comment spam. SK did a great job, but it bloated the database since all its data, IP addresses, everything were stored in the blog's database. Then development of SK stopped, and I switched to Akisment. At the moment, Akismet stops about 6,000 spam comments in a typical month. It is pretty effective, but every now and then a new crop of spam breaks through. I mark them as spam by hand; and I do the same with any comment that seems to have the placement of a URL as its sole purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I feel your pain but there is NO point addressing these people. They just cruise around looking for blogs and random - hit and run operation. Much of the comment spam is in fact automated. Your pleas will fall on deaf ears, I am afraid. Fortunately you probably don't have masses of that to deal with - imagine a really high-traffic blog with hundreds of comments a day, absolute nightmare to deal with. I just click the Spam button and continue on with my life, it's not worth wasting any more time on than necessary...

    ReplyDelete
  7. The way you are tracking comments to your blog is good. I also do that in my blog I delete spamming comments who only wants to advertise in my site.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I agree with you. Spamming is an unstoppable vice, w simply can try to check it. You are putting really a great effort.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment!

Unfortunately, comment spam has grown to the point that all comments need to be moderated. All legitimate comments will be published as soon as possible.