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Tuesday, September 03, 2019

No comment


I've always believed in allowing comments on my blog. At one time the back and forth of the comments was usually more interesting than the original post. I didn't even use Blogger's moderation function for a long time. Then I had a run in with an online stalker/bully/psycho and started moderating the comments.

The way moderation works is that someone leaves a comment, but it isn't posted until the blog owner (me) approves it. This has eliminated a great deal of spam over the years. But recently I hadn't been receiving any notifications of comments on my blog. I just assumed it was because...well...no one was commenting.  Then someone mentioned they had tried to leave a comment on my blog and it wasn't showing up.

I checked my account and sure enough, there were a slew of comments waiting to be moderated, many several months old. Now granted, many were spam.  But there were some real ones (sorry Baggy, several were from you).

And there were many odd ones, especially on a post from back in 2005 called Elvis drove a truck.  There were about 20 or so new anonymous comments from August that seemed as though some class in blogging had been assigned to go to the post and comment (not necessarily read it). They were largely generic with platitudes like:
This is really interesting, You are a very skilled blogger. I've joined your feed and look forward to seeking more of your fantastic post. Also, I've shared your web site in my social networks!
Normally I'd suspect that some URL for Russian porn was embedded in the comment, but there doesn't seem to be any. Though only one of the anonymous posts even mentioned the content of the post:
I believe everything published was very reasonable.But, what about this? suppose you were to write a awesome post title?I am not suggesting your content isn't solid., however what if you added a title that makes people desire more? 
I mean "Elvis drove a truck" is a little plain. You should look at Yahoo's front page and see how they create article titles to grab people interested. You might add a video or a pic or two to grab people excited about everything've got to say.Just my opinion, it could bring your website a little bit more interesting.
 My writing has many faults, but writing plain headlines is not one of them. And advising me to add a "pic or two" to get people excited leads me to believe this person (?) didn't look at the blog either. I rarely post without some image.

If these are spam bots leaving these comments, I also wish they'd learn spelling and grammar. Spam me with complete sentences and I might take you a bit more seriously.

Oh well, at least I know the comment section still works.

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