Poll - Do you moderate blog comments?

For nearly six years I have resisted comment moderation on my blogs. My feeling is that when you add moderation you are putting up a barrier between you and your readers. The reader has taken time to comment and then there is no immediate gratification to seeing the comment live on your blog. They have to wait until you get around to reading and approving it.

Yet, I am sooooooooo sick of spam comments. You know the ones I'm talking about. Where the bot or low paid commenter uses a name like "London SEO" or "Directory Submission" or "ecommerce856" and writes something like: great post i learning lots from blog keep up blogging. 

I'm seriously considering going to moderated comments because I'm getting 5-10 of these types of comments every day on both blogs. I'm seriously tired of them showing up on my blogs until I have time to delete them and mark as spam. Hear that? I mark these types of comments as spam and block the ISPs. A lot of spam comments never get through due to pretty good spam filters, but enough do get through to ruin the experience for me and readers who get NO value from comments like these.

What do you do? Here's a quickie poll. I'd love to know how you handle these types of comments and how you feel about comment moderation, both as a publisher and a blog reader.

Tip:If you don't want your comment deleted, use your real name and add real value to your comment. You may get a response and the ensuing discussion will be more relevant and interesting.

End rant. Thanks for taking the poll and sharing your thoughts about comment moderation.

Comments

[Clint Cora]

Yes, I'm moderating comments on my blogs. It's incredible how even my newer blogs get these spam comments. The worse ones are the comments which have nothing to do with the blog theme itself, ie., completely different topics and the spammer actually included a URL link within the comment. I heard from other bloggers that one should just allow all comments and then edit out the spam ones but that would be a lot of work if your blog is targeted. As one who offers comments on other blogs, I actually don't mind being moderated as I understand the situation.

[Grant Griffiths]

Denise - I have written extensive on this very subject. My position has always been that we owe it to our readers to moderate our comments. Not only to make sure some spam might sneak through. But to also keep out any nasty or R rated comments.

What I have found is that most blog readers expect there to be some moderation of blog post. And most realize there might be some delay between the moment they hit post comment to when it is actually posted.

With the current commenting system I am using, Disqus, I can set it to not hold or moderate anyone who has been approved before. And I can create a "white list" of commenters I know are safe and who I want to be pushed through immediately.

Does it take a bit of extra work to moderate comments, yes. Is it worth it, double yes.

[Gladys Strickland]

I've had to start because of the spam. I don't get many posts, but just before Christmas, I got targeted. I was getting 10 posts a minute on a couple of older posts, so I had to shut commenting down on those. Decided to go to moderating for now to try and stop it (or at least slow it down).

I understand your reluctance to start, but I completely understand if you do. Maybe try it for awhile, then turn off again to see if it has improved.

[Bret Simmons]

I have mine set up to where I have to approve your FIRST comment. Once I determine that you are a REAL person and not a spam machine, you have access to comment on my blog without my pre-screening what you say. I have never had a problem with this. I always click on the first-time commenter's link to make sure there is a real website back there or a real e-mail address. Great question! Bret

[Rose]

I most definitely moderate comments on my blog to protect from spam. I also use Akismet.

[Ching Ya]

It's a daily task for me and sometimes I need to look through Spam folder just to make sure quality commenters didn't end up there! Very trouble and time consuming. Often times I need to check whether a comment can be found all over the web; plus the URL provided as my site is a do-follow blog. It would be a dream come true if one day we can all live in a spam-free world.

Yes, moderation is definitely a must.

@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker

[Sire]

I manually moderate all comments. By this I mean although all comments are seen immediately by the commentator I do check all comments and delete or spam as I see fit.

Peter

[Michael Hyatt]

If I may so bold, switch to WordPress and use a plugin called Askimet. I get an average of 50 or so comments per post on my blog. I do not use any form of comment moderation. The plugin catches all the spam.

I used to be on TypePad, too. Moving to WordPress was the best thing I ever did.

Thanks.

[Deb Phillips]

My blogs are on WordPress, and they're set up to moderate only the first comment that someone makes. However, Michael Hyatt's comment has made me realize that the Akismet plugin has always perfectly flagged all spam comments.

So I can see from my own experience that moderation might not be necessary in WordPress, if using Akismet. It's quite an effective plugin. Having said that, I'm on the cautious side, so I'll probably continue to moderate the first comment.

[Denise Wakeman]

The moderation camp is definitely winning in this poll - 86% yes vs. 14% no.

One thing I want to clear up is that I'm referring to comments that are blatantly looking for links back and add absolutely no value whatsoever. In fact you can usually tell they haven't even read the blog. There are people being paid to submit comments like these simply in the hopes of getting some seo value. Those are spam in my opinion. The "true" spam generally doesn't get through thanks to TypePad's anti-spam system.