Rubbish Comments

[terrym]

HI All
Since starting my blog using Serendipity, I'm getting increasingly more really weird comments, sometimes with random characters, and other times with sentences made with random words. Obviously these comments are easy to delete, but I'm really interested in why people make these strange comments, and what they think they gain, and finally, is there a way to stop these comments reaching my blog?
Thanks in advance
Terry

[yellowled]

Obviously these comments are easy to delete, but I'm really interested in why people make these strange comments, and what they think they gain, and finally, is there a way to stop these comments reaching my blog?

Comments spam is an issue common to all web platforms that have comments. It's not specific to blogs or Serendipity. The reason for comment spam in most cases is to gain a better search engine ranking for their own site by being linked to by other sites (by placing their URL in the comment form). Most of these are not actually made by people (although they may look as if they were) but by bots.

There are various event plugins available for Serendipity to try and control comment spam as far as possible or at least to make it much easier to deal with it. Some of these can even be combined to make it even harder to place comment spam. However, always consider that you will make it harder for real commentators as well by using some of these measures.

I highly recommend a setup which has proven to work quite well for some users lately (although that's no guarantee it will always work well). As the first three event plugins (and in that order) install:

1. Spamblock Bee
2. Spamblock (Bayes)
3. Spamblock

1 and 2 are available on/via Spartacus, 3 is part of the s9y core. Of course, these need proper configuration, and they do offer a vast array of options. The Bayes plugin also needs some training, but after a while, this setup should do the heavy lifting without much further input by you required. Works for me.

YL

[MalcolmFitzgerald]

I've experienced this on my blog. I think it's automated software to spread URL links. The above post seems to clarify my prediction and thanks for sharing how to block these annoying comments.