I have a small website that I run as a hobby; nothing big but I have gotten some nice feedback and a bit of recognition for it so I’m happy with it.
I recently added the ability for visitors to leave comments on the site. (I was teaching myself php and needed a project.) This was fine for a few days, but suddenly I’m getting a lot of people posting garbage all over the site. Here’s the worst example of late.
So, my question for the other webmasters out there; how do you deal with this sort of thing? Is this normal? Anything I can do about it besides deleting the comments as they come in? Or should I just remove the ability to comment from the site? Any suggestions or feedback appreciated. Thanks.
It’s not really spam (it’s not promoting anything as far as I can see), just mindless banter.
Unless you want to start moderating the comments, or making it so that people have to register before leaving one, then it’s a case of either expecting that kind of crap, or removing the comment facility. Those comments actually seemed quite witty and intellectual compared to some of the drooling moronic nonsense I’ve seen elsewhere (Youtube, Yahoo Answers…)
Or maybe you could add a message board to the site and let people use that for discussions.
How popular is the comments section with legitimate users? Would it hurt the site if the feature were switched off?
BTW, I took legal advice on something I was working on before, and was told not to pre-moderate anything, as this assumes a certain responsibility on the part of the moderator. Better to let it go up, then delete it.
If that were me I’d leave it up, because it’s hilarious. But I appreciate it’s not quite what you’re trying to achieve.
P.S. I remember playing that game! Must have been back in the 1970s?
Maybe you could also de-emphasise it a bit by changing the page layout and design - leave a bigger gap (or insert some other content) between the bottom of the article and the top of the comments - put them in a lighter font, or in a little scrolly box so they can’t all be seen at once, stuff like that.
It’s not really comment spam - which is good. It’s just people being idiots, instead of bots posting crap. That shit can run RAMPANT and make much more of a mess than you have here.
I would suggest adding a layer of moderation to your comments section.
When a new comment is added, mark it as “Approved = 0”
Send yourself an email saying “please moderate this comment” with the comment text in the email and a link to a simple script that flags it as approved (Approved = 1)
Only show comments Where Approved = 1
There, now you have another PHP project for yourself
Zipper’s method sounds like a pain in the butt, and also see jjimm’s comment about pre-approval of comments.
Just make a simple method of deleting the comments if it bothers you. Those don’t appear to be bots (but you WILL get bots, for sure), but it wouldn’t hurt for you to install a method of deleting as well as an automated pre-screening process (that you don’t have to interact with, like, say, not posting comment that contains “viagra” or “tramadol” or “poker” or whatever words you don’t want appearing; or email verification that they’re a real person who posted a real comment).
More PHP fun for you! Welcome to the club of constantly fighting spammers and bots! Good times.
Thanks all. I guess I forgot the site was on the Internet. (Somehow it’s different when it’s your site as opposed to YouTube or something.)
I was using the term spam to mean any bunch of unwanted, irrelevant comments. I didn’t know it was applied only to advertising. (So what is the term for a bunch of irrelevant comments? Barrens chat?)
I guess I had assumed that most people would at least say something relevant to the page they were on; I wasn’t expecting what looked like a lot of random, irrelevant off-the-wall comments. But, yeah, I forgot. This is the Internet. :smack:
I do have an admin screen that I can use to delete the comments but some of these are at least marginally on-topic so its a bit hard to determine where to start deleting. Also, I don’t want to get into a “Hey, where did my comment go” argument.
I suppose I could go to a pre-screening system but I don’t want to discourage anyone from actually commenting on the game in question; I just wish I could do something about the irrelevant stuff.
Maybe I could put together a basic forum area and direct them over there. I going to be out of town and off-line for the next few days; maybe I’ll see what I can come up with.
But it sounds like everyone is saying that, yeah, it happens and I can either live with it, delete them (either before or after they are posted) or just take the comment capability away. For now I think I’ll probably go in and clean up some of the more ridiculous ones.
And I somehow suspect that most of these are coming from just one or two people. Maybe I’ll start tracking their ip addresses and experiment with blocking a few.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback. If anyone has any other suggestions or comments let me know. As I said, I’ll be gone for a few days but I’ll check back later.
I suggest making lemonade - you’ve got the beginnings of a community there - give them something to draw together into (a message board - then replace the comments section on the page with “talk about this on our message board”), then find some way to suck cash out of them.
