The Cranky Professor

I've recently converted all my blogs to WordPress 1.5, which comes with a variety of easy-to-use spam killing tools. Since I've had all the spam blocking enabled, I've been spam free, haven't had to resort to registration, and haven't had to disable trackbacks.

While I don't often leave comments here, I'd surely miss the opportunity to do so. Conversations are more informative than lectures, usually.

At a minimum, your providing a e-mail address (modified to defeat robots) could work, but would be like sending in written notes to the professor after class.

Of course, you may not see your blog through that metaphorical lens!

But I do agree that WordPress's anti-comment-spam plug-ins work very well. It cut my spam from several hundred per week to two or three.

I, too, have thought about closing comments entirely on my blog, since these days the first activity I have to do in the morning is clear spam off my blog. It infuriates me that nothing is sacred, not even education. I can't even tell you how many offers I've had from Nigeria in the past month that guarantee to augment my finances with just a bit of help. I hope there's a ring of Dante's Hell waiting for these jerks.

It seems a shame to let these idiots shut us down. I, for one, refuse to stop what has been a valuable source of continued conversation for me, and one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place: reader comments. MovableType's filter has come a long way. I just wish they would add a feature that would automatically shut off comments after 10 days or so.

The battle continues. Good luck.

.....Yes, I started blogging because I left so many comments that people kept saying "you should get your own blog!" *sigh*

I've been blogging since June 2002, and have never had comments enabled. Still, every day I get 20 or more idiots trying to spam my blog. I see these fools trying to access my comments.cgi script, which doesn't exist because I deleted it. The spammers are persistent, too: sometimes a spammer will make 500 attempts to access that comments script, even though each attempt generates a 404.

*sigh*