To moderate or not?

One other thing that I guess might annoy people is that I moderate comments, mostly to keep spam out. Akismet picks up tons of spam, but some comments still get through, and if anything this is increasing.

Justin uses a very simple Turing test to check if the respondent is human, and it seems unikely that the spammers are going to keep track of the required answer to that test for every blog, so I’d imagine it’s quite successful.

So, would I be better off switching moderation off and a Turing test on?

3 Responses

  1. Akismet does the job well enough for me but if I had to choose I would prefer a test like Justins to moderation – no delay upon posting. The only problem I’ve had with Akismet is whenever I upgrade WordPress I forget to reactivate the plugin, and end up having to delete 50 spam comments.

  2. I find Akismet kinda hit and miss, it’s catches most stuff but every now and then an “inoovative” spammer – a /clever/ arsehole, if you will – finds a way to get past it for a day or so. If it wasn’t for moderation in these circumstances, these guys would get a dozen or a half-dozen comments through each time this happened. I reckon a Turing Test is the best approach.