We all love to get comments on our blogs, don’t we. Especially when they are nice polite comments like “great post”, “keep it coming” and so on. The problem is that so many of these comments are just an excuse for some spammer to get a link back to their own site. That is not why I am here blogging! Today I have taken two steps to enhance the signal to noise ratio in my comments.
First of all, I have activated ComLuv. According to some review I have read it will make my site more attractive for other bloggers to comment on as it will create a link back to their own latest blog post.
Secondly, I have installed “WordPress Hashcash“. It will force the commenters computer to perform some calculations in JavaScript to make it harder for spammers to post comments. This is not a CAPTCHA solution.
So, on one hand I have added a feature which should bring more human comments to the site. On the other hand I have added a feature which should reduce the number of non-human comments to the site. I hope the combination will work as intended.
HashCash seems to be working.
Or maybe it does not work. Hashcash classified one of my own comments as spam…
Trying again, it had better work this time.
Testing a comment with Intense Debate.
Testing to reply to a comment using Intense Debate.
Actually, I decided to turn off CommentLuv after reading Google's guidelines on SEO for webmasters.
You already turned CommentLuv off? But why? I don't understand. This plugin will encourage readers to make some comments, especially if you make the links dofollow. I think I have to read those guidelines.
That is an interesting point you make there. But even without comment luv you can still include links when you comment on my blog. Did you read this discussion on why people are moving away from comment luv?