Ambiguous One Liner Comments
Lately I started getting lots of odd one liner comments that usually look somewhat like this:
Great post! I really enjoyed it!
There are many variations, but the message is always the same - a generic praise that does not contain any references to actual content of the post. Some of these have URL’s attached to them, and some others don’t. Most of them end up in the moderation queue or Akismet spam box.
I do realize that some people might just want to tell me I did a great job, but have nothing else to add. Still, 99.9% of these posts get deleted whether or not they contain a spammy URL.
I do this for several reasons:
- Even if the post does not contain a URL, it doesn’t mean it’s not a probe to cheat the first time poster moderation rule (when you post here for the first time, your post is held for moderation - after that, it’s up to Akismet and BadBehavior to keep you out). These things are likely to be followed by regular spam once the email in the email field gets white listed
- Even if it’s not spam, the value of such comment is very low. It does not contribute anything to the ongoing discussion. It’s generic - almost like a trackbac, but these at least let me know who links to this post and let me visit the blogs of people who read me. I found lots of cool blogs via trackbacks, or by looking at who links to me on technorati
- If you think about it, the only people who would genuinely post a generic message like this would usually not be regular readers. Most probably they would be random visitors who stumbled upon a post via Google. So chances are that if I mistakenly delete their post, taking it for a bot spam, they won’t get upset because they were never planning on coming back to this site anyway.
Of course this is not to say that I don’t appreciate kind words from random visitors. I do appreciate them very much, but at times it’s better to err on the side of caution. So if you posted one of those generic “Good job!” or “Nice Post” comments and it got deleted, I apologize. I don’t delete them automatically - I usually look at each one individually to see if it maybe it is less generic and off topic than I initially suspected. Unfortunately, most are not.
Do you get these types of comments on your blog? Do you think these are bots, malicious people or just some poor lost souls who leave super-genetic comments?
Related Posts:
October 15th, 2007 at 4:29 pm (6569) [Quote]
Your website proved mighty useful to me. May I suggest trying some anti-depressants such as Valium?
Posted usingOctober 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm (6570) [Quote]
No! >:(
lol
Posted usingOctober 15th, 2007 at 5:05 pm (6571) [Quote]
FINALLY! The Love button and the Fart button both on the same page! Your ads are the greatest!
Posted usingOctober 15th, 2007 at 5:21 pm (6572) [Quote]
I think you broke it by mentioning the ads. All I see are fairly generic text links now. Google knows when we speak of it and it doesn’t seem to like it.
But I think I know which ads you are talking about.
Posted usingOctober 15th, 2007 at 6:18 pm (6573) [Quote]
Great post! I really enjoyed it!
… obligatory comment out of the way, I have to say that yes I get these a LOT. “Fortunately,” my blog isn’t insanely popular, so I can more easily tell when comments are fake. Generally, if it contains nothing the references the post (”Great post! UPS really does suck at delivering packages on time in one piece!”), then I don’t let it through. You might find it valuable to track other stats with users (e.g., how much time they take to view a page and post a comment). If it’s legitimate, the post probably won’t be done in 5 seconds like most of the spam. I did a blog post a while back about other ways of preventing spam, but I’m lazier than a bot, so I’m not going to bother finding the URL for you. If you’re really interested, I’m sure you can manage
Posted usingOctober 15th, 2007 at 9:07 pm (6574) [Quote]
I’ve got a fair few of these here and there, both on my forum and my blog… and I usually delete them too, for the same reasons you pointed out. They can get quite numerous at times, but (from what I’ve seen) they do seem to give up too.
Posted usingMay 9th, 2008 at 4:12 pm (9015) [Quote]
I have a dozen blogs out there and yes they get hammered with fake comments. None of them go through because I use the API pluggin to stop spam. Many spammers use bots to get back links to their site and that is why you get those quick posts.
Posted usingMay 9th, 2008 at 4:29 pm (9016) [Quote]
Yeah, I understand that - I use Akismet, Bad Behavior and a Captcha plugin to weed these things out. What I don’t understand is why do these bots inject “Great post!” into comments instead some link payload or other advertising crap.
Posted usingMay 9th, 2008 at 5:22 pm (9018) [Quote]
I would think the “Great post!” crap is to try to fool the average blog owner into thinking it’s a legit comment - only after looking at the name/email/url would they notice it’s spam.
Posted usingMay 9th, 2008 at 7:03 pm (9019) [Quote]
That could be true, but most of these don’t even have links or valid email addresses attached to them. I’m thinking that they are trying to fool the site admin to white listing the email/ip address to spam it later or something like that.
Posted using