Timely: This is a kicker for me… often when I commenting “I” feel that time & place is important (I know in reality it isn’t that important, but…”. Worse yet when leaving a comment on a blogger “I know” (previous contact in some form) and it gets held in moderation… a little bit of me dies right then… even knowing it is just a bit of code holding me up, not the human behind the blog (Used to happen with Krizzlybear’s old blog site).

Default settings: A trap for new bloggers is not seeing their blog from the outside… I know I wasn’t aware of my blog’s comment behaviour until a helpful commenter told me off… So if you are new to it… make sure you visit your own blog while “logged out of administrator”. Leave yourself 3 comments and decide whether you would come back and comment.

WP Bulk Processing: WordPress’ new bulk comment processing removes a lot of the old hassle too. select & bulk approve or delete. That of course is after all the other safe guards have been used.

Gnomeaggedon last blogged about Noob or Inexperienced?

I actually don’t mind the 2P set bonus for Holy Priests…I use PoH a LOT, and will be using a lot more (we rarely have 5 Holy Priests in the raid :p). However…the 4P bonus? /gag and /retch: USELESS for Holy Priests. If you’re casting that many PW:S, then it’s time to respec to Disc. Sorry, but throwing out our wimpy shield is NOT the best use of mana.

Based on Matt’s comment above, I can see a couple possibilities for why this comment was held: First, a lot of colons, which might imply URLs. If that’s the reason, then I’ll reiterate that Matt’s moderation system is broken.

Second, “/gag” and “/retch”–might be perceived as personal attacks. Of course, context is key. Any system based on trigger words that aren’t always “bad” words (there are only a handful of words I block here: one starts with “c” and another with “f”) is faulty, and the likelihood of false positives is extraordinarily high.

My suggestion to Matt, if he hasn’t done so already, is to review the rules under which his moderation system operates, and really analyze whether loosening them up will result in fewer false positives, or an unacceptably greater amount of spam.

Finally: Nothing in my original essay nor in any of my comments should be construed in any way, shape, or form as any kind of attack on Matt, whom I consider not only a colleague but a friend. That’s why I carefully avoided any direct references to his blog: My entire issue was with the process, not the person!

I submit that if your system is blocking comments such as mine, it’s not working as intended. I.e., it’s broken.

The moderation system on my blog is slightly more complex. Anyone’s allowed to comment. Administrators do NOT have to approve comments in order for them to show up. You don’t have to have a previously approved comment either. However, I have a preloaded list of certain keywords.

If the default WP spam system notices a word or phrase in the comment on the list, it will hold it. (Words like poker or a variety of different drugs for example) Not only that, it matches words inside words. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”.

If the spam system notices two OR MORE links in the same comment, it will hold it.

So don’t take it personally. 9 times out of 10 your comments will always show up. But every once in a while you’ll match a condition where it temporarily holds the comment.

I counter this with the fact that everytime a comment is held for moderation, I get emailed. My email client is virtually open. Most comments get approved within 10 minutes when they appear.

I don’t approve all comments that get posted manually because it’s simply unpractical for me to do so. I get many comments on posts and I would spend a lot more time then I’m willing to do just hitting “Allow” after “Allow”. So the current system has its quirks. But it does allow me to manage the best of both worlds and I’m sorry that it flags you every once in a while. Feel free to ding me if you notice my blog eats your comment and I can approve it immediately.

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I guess they just hate me…

Yeah on our site (we use WordPress) the first time needs to be approved. It seems to work well for us, but we don’t have a lot of traffic though either. And Sideshow is (usually) pretty quick to respond to the emails alerting comments pending.

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I also realize now I basically addressed two issues in my post, when I really only wanted to focus on one. That one, of course, is essentially the holding of comments for moderation. I strayed into the area of "prove you’re a human" which, while a concern of mine, is not the major issue here. (I’ve railed against that in other posts. *grin*)

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Blogspot Comments System (It’s horrible in so many ways…)
Captcha Moderation
Pop-up comment boxes
‘Required’ Login or particular ‘id’ type.

Pre-emtive moderation as such doesn’t bother me too much, to be honest, making it harder for me to actually comment does. However, I totally agree that pre-emtive moderation of the type described really isn’t worth it

/hug

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