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

[Sandy]

I second what Michael says about Akismet. You have the opportunity to verify that it is all spam before the comments are deleted... very efficient, effective and necessary.

[Keith]

I moderate, and like a couple others, I only moderate your first comment, once approved your comments appear immediately (you can change the setting in your admin). Because my site is do-follow, I get some extra spam, but I don't mind weeding through it to give some link juice to my readers.

[Denise Wakeman]

In the 3 days this poll has been up, I've continued to receive many bogus comments (not on this post!) with no "real" names and clearly looking for link luv or just blatantly advertising their services. I'm moving to moderated comments. It will be faster to manage and the offenders' comments won't ever show up on my blogs.

Thanks to all who took the poll and shared your views. At the time of this comments "Yes" votes (bloggers who moderate comments) are at 85%.

[Crystal Coleman]

Hi Denise, I too, moderate my blog comments. In blogs that I follow, I am annoyed by spam comments that are not removed. More often than not, I will stop reading comments and leave the blog altogether.

We are bombarded with spam in electronic and physical forms! For me, sorting the "real" comments from the detritus maxes out my spam threshold - I don't feel it is worth my time.

The spam you are speaking of though, I think is definitely more difficult to moderate. I would rather read a blog that rewarded the true readers posting comments that add to the dialogue by eliminating the SEO submitted type.

The difficulty in moderating those types of comments is discerning the real from the fake.

[Personal Concierge]

The worse ones are the comments which have nothing to do with the blog theme itself, i.e., completely different topics and the spammer actually included a URL link within the comment.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.

[JNFerree]

Denise,

I'm in Grant's corner on this and the other 88% of the (49) YES voters. In truth, I actually enjoy responding to relevant and pithy comments on my Social Media Marketing Blog.

I feel your pain when having to click the remove all SPAM comments the frequent SPAM comments I get. I've noticed that most are from Russian IP addresses of late.

I am particular to engaging those business blog where user generated content seems to play a major role in the webmaster's marketing model. This piece here that you've included the POLL is a classic example.

I'm a WP Blogger and you're not, but I like you vote/poll widget. Is this special to TypePad or does this come in a WP flavor too?

BTW, I discovered you on Twitter (today) 1-14-10 via your Tweet RE: Mike Stelzer, in case you were wondering who is this guy Neil and how did he find me.

[JNFerree]

You're right Michael. Askimet is a life saver when it comes to buffering the spammers.

[Personal Concierge]

I think 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.

[Brian]

Definitely Akismet. I got tired of moderating those comments that looked like Yoda had written them or said something like "me love you long time" on a post I wrote about iPods. Akismet saves me from pulling my hair out about those kind of comments!

[Ginny]

Right now, I have it set to moderate after 10 days or something like that. I'm going to have to go fully moderated though because the comments are getting more & more frequent.