RE: Blogs and Comments

Sorry to be late to this thread. For fear of bringing a curse upon myself, I
am reluctant to admit this, but I have had no problems with comment spam,
even though my traffic numbers have been in the respectable range for quite
some time now. 

What am I doing wrong -- or right?

-- Bob Ambrogi
______________________
Robert J. Ambrogi, Esq.
Rockport, MA
Web: www.legaline.com
Blog: www.legaline.com/lawsites.html 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis Kennedy [mailto:dmk-zCcesvzgDd9m78FN9qvvowC/[email protected]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 9:51 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: [NetLawyers] Blogs and Comments
> 
> 
> Let me take a mildly contrarian approach. 
> 
> You can't stay ahead of the spammers. They've now added 
> Trackback spam to their repertoire. See, e.g., 
> http://www.elise.com/mt/archives/000577trackback_spam.php.
> 
> I flat out don't allow comments on my blog - sort of a 
> tribute to Ronald Reagan's famous "Mr. Green, I paid for this 
> microphone" moment. The spammers have destroyed my use of my 
> telephone with unsolicited calls, my email with barrage after 
> barrage of messages, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay 
> to give them a platform from which to destroy blogging for 
> me, too. If they are going to destroy my blog experience, 
> they are going to have to earn it the hard way. I'm not 
> giving them an inch this time. As for pre-approving 
> commenters, I'm not sure I understand why I need to do all 
> the work  - shouldn't the spammers do all the work? That's 
> why they have rooms full of programmers in Eastern Europe 
> working all day long for anyway. Let them pay the programmers 
> to earn their pay instead of making me put together 
> whitelists and other time-consuming temporary fixes. 
> "Whitelists" baffle me in this context. There's no way that I 
> could have approved in advance comments from many of the 
> bloggers I now count as friends.
> 
> And, blog comments would be just one more type of 
> communication that I'd be late in responding too and never 
> having the time to police. My hats off to the people who want 
> to do the comment thing, but blog comments just seem like the 
> worst of all possible worlds for me. People who have 
> something to say to me about my blog can email me. If they 
> have something they need to perform in public as a response, 
> they can use their own blog and I'll see it here. For other 
> blogs I might do, comments might make sense, but this blog is 
> the microphone I paid for. They can go ahead and send me 
> regular spam or call me at home during dinner, if they want, 
> and leave my blog alone.
> 
> Finally, I remain hopeful that Congress will soon approve the 
> CAN COMMENT SPAM bill that should eliminate the entire problem.
> 
> By the way, to all the spam filter fans out there, thank you 
> for your continuing efforts to endorse programs that further 
> destroy the remaining utility of email. Today's example, I 
> look unprofessional for not turning in an article because 
> someone's spam filters sent" blocked two emails I sent with 
> the articles attached.  Welcome to 1980s email all over again 
> - "Ring, ring. Just calling to see if you got the email I sent you."
> 
> Shouldn't this be our battle cry? "Never give in - never, 
> never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or 
> petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good 
> sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently 
> overwhelming might of the spammers."
> 
> Dennis
> 
> Dennis Kennedy
> The Dennis Kennedy Law Firm, LLC
> 1276 Bridle Road
> St. Louis, MO 63119
> (314) 963-9798
> dmk-zCcesvzgDd9m78FN9qvvowC/[email protected]
> www.denniskennedylaw.com
> 
> Helping business executives signing important technology 
> agreements get a good night's sleep.
> 
> Visit my my blog at http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin O'Keefe - lexBlog [mailto:kevin-fkW/[email protected]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 6:46 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [NetLawyers] Blogs and Comments
> 
> > From: "Jerry Lawson" <[email protected]>
>  > Does TypePad have any built-in anti-comment spam features? 
>  I had been
> > thinking about moving some existing blogs over there anyway.
> 
> Typepad has an IP banning feature, on which you manually add 
> the IP's (typepad provides IP with notice of each post) that 
> supposedly should work to prevent serial spanners. The 
> spanners must be on to us though as I sure pick up some 
> spammers spamming my old blog on typepad that's still up.
> 
> > Movable Type ver. 3.0 is an interim version, for developers.  The
> > "mass consumption" ver. 3.0 is not available yet.
> > Has anyone installed the third-party Movable Type plug-ins 
> that Jeff 
> > mentions, and if so, with what results?
> 
> We use MT for all our blog development for individual lawyers 
> and law firms. Though we have added some of our own features 
> for other items, the comment features that comes stock works 
> pretty well. The user interface for the backend comment 
> feature is actually quite nice as well.
> 
> When someone comments, the browser screen will then let them 
> know their comment needs to be approved before it will be 
> displayed. The blog publisher then receives an email that 
> there is a comment and a link to the backend where they see a 
> list of comments that are marked pending, approved or banned. 
> For subsequent comments, the blog publisher may then allow 
> the person's comments to flow through without approval, if the wish.
> 
> There is also a feature to approve 'commenters' in advance. 
> This can work well for a closed community for which people 
> have to ask the blog publisher to comment. This also works 
> for some law firms, primarily large ones with quality and 
> assurance controls, who will publish legal news and updates 
> and then only allow the publishing law firm's lawyers to add 
> comments. Comments are closed to the public. Law marketing 
> directors and managers find this attractive so they need not 
> teach lawyers in their firms to use the backend of the blog 
> publishing tool.
> 
> - Kevin
> --
> Kevin O¹Keefe
> President, lexBlog, Inc.
> mailto:kevin-fkW/[email protected]
> --
> The company: http://lexblog.com
> The blog: http://kevin.lexblog.com
> --
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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