Okay, now I'm getting a bit concerned. It seems to me that Danielha has an unfair advantage, like it's part of his job description to be checking your blog, and well, he's probably a much faster typer than I am, and shit man, I got things to do, how am I supposed to keep my King of Comments status?
Danielha, love ya man, but this is my corner, got it?
fredwilson
· 2 years ago
you have a four year advantage and Daniel's hopefuly going to come up with a way you can comment in your sleep :)
terrycojones
· 2 years ago
Interesting observation, and true in my experience too.
Amount of time since original posting should be factored into probabilistic spam detection. I've seen startups founded on lesser ideas :-)
Daniel Ha
· 2 years ago
Definitely not a thought to write off... there's more to it of course, but you're on the right idea path.
COD
· 2 years ago
I use a plug in with Wordpress to close comments on posts after 14 days, and have done so for years. It dramatically reduces comment spam, and as you state, the reality is very few useful comments come in after the post rolls off the front page anyway.
Martin Gordon
· 2 years ago
I've closed comments on the my blog for posts older than a year after realizing that I was getting tons of spam on older posts. I do provide a contact form on my blog, and I think my closed comments note mentions it as an alternate way of commenting. In contrast, I get very little spam on my contacts form, probably one or two messages a month.
You do have your email address listed, so maybe making a note of that on the "Comments are closed" text would be a good idea (if it's possible under your current setup).
While a good number of comments on older posts are spam, I think there are still good reasons to leave the discussion open on older material. The approach to spam and comment preservation is just going to have to be that much better.
RG
· 2 years ago
Fred,
Is the problem that sixapart's typepad has no spam protection or that it just really sucks?
I've had pretty good success in the past with Automattic's Akismet. They claim to have a .001% miss rate. AND its free for personal use (just the way it should be) http://www.akismet.com
I see you complain a lot about comment spam on here, but have never seen Akismet brought up before.
Good Luck!
-RG
Greg (Wise Bread)
· 2 years ago
I can totally vouch for Akismet. We went from dealing with dozens of comment spam a day before Akismet to forgetting what spam looked liked. Akismet is that good.
Cheers, Greg
Jonathan Marks
· 2 years ago
agree with you. My experience is that there is little conversation lost by closing the comments on posts older than 30 days. I have had excellent e-mails from people who have been trawling a specific subject and come up with the blog entry through Google or Yahoo. But they didn't need the comments space to do that. Success with your blog....its a must read here in Europe.
Tom W.
· 2 years ago
Fred, I'd personally never close out comments on the old posts - I have several years-old threads that I love. Bet you have a few - I'd urge you not to close the old threads.
RA
· 2 years ago
Typepad does need this feature... but what it needs even more is pagination.
It is the only big blog platform out there that currently provides you with no way of seeing older posts at the bottom of the page (and the familiar "Older" - "Recent" navigation). For people who host ads and get paid by page views this is easy money left on the table). Instead of generating several page views by allow users an easy way to get to the next page of posts most people will just leave the page. Since Typepad has schemes to share ad revenues with bloggers this is also money that Six Apart doesnt get.
They have been promising this forever but it never comes.
rick
· 2 years ago
If older comment posts are closed... the last hole in the Fred Wilson communication defense system will be plugged.
jackson
· 2 years ago
A little off topic here, as I think it's a no-brainer - shut 'em down, I don't think Danielha should get points. Can Lotto employees play Lotto?
Hey, what do we win anyway?
Zaid
· 2 years ago
Closing older posts to reduce spam is still beating around the bush. Let's say this idea becomes popular and gets well adopted...it will take a couple of clicks for spammers to stop spamming old posts with comments closed and go after the new posts.
This may be a solution--but a very temporary one.
Drew Meyers
· 2 years ago
Totally agree with your suggestion. I'd love to be able to close all comments on every post over a month old. Wordpress is great, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this -- anyone know?
simon
· 2 years ago
definatly shut them down.
Raj
· 2 years ago
In our analysis, we find that the vast majority of comments attached to older posts can be attributed to spam comments by a significant majority. Very, very little value is gleaned by keeping old posts open for longer than 2 weeks or so.
Shannon Clark
· 2 years ago
A variation you might consider is to start by closing comments on non-commented, old posts (i.e. ones without a comment). For ones with a comment you might reset the timer on closing them to comments based on the last comment (initially I'd suggest trying 14 days after the last comment, but you might also play with variations that shorten that period over time - active discussions might remain open for months even years, but mostly dormant ones would shutdown.
There is indeed value to the comments in certain old posts - I know of many bloggers whose old posts on a given topic have sparked a small community in the comment threads for a given post (usually on topics hard to find elsewhere online). On my own blog the majority of my comments happen around when I post something - but not uncommonly they pick up again when a post is picked up by another blog.
Shannon
Mat
· 2 years ago
Closing comments on old posts is an unfortunate concession to spammers that limits the level of discourse in the blogosphere. We should not be so willing to let spammers take this point.
Fred, surely you have come across plenty of older blog posts where the discussion thread has "come back to life" after some time? To unilaterally prevent this from happening is tragic.
A better solution is to simply do a better job filtering spam comments, and to make spam management less of a burden on bloggers. It's not impossible.
Prakash
· 2 years ago
Let's forget the spam issue for a while....just the thought that the blogger should be able to close comments is a good one.
All Comments
Danielha, love ya man, but this is my corner, got it?
Amount of time since original posting should be factored into probabilistic spam detection. I've seen startups founded on lesser ideas :-)
You do have your email address listed, so maybe making a note of that on the "Comments are closed" text would be a good idea (if it's possible under your current setup).
While a good number of comments on older posts are spam, I think there are still good reasons to leave the discussion open on older material. The approach to spam and comment preservation is just going to have to be that much better.
Is the problem that sixapart's typepad has no spam protection or that it just really sucks?
I've had pretty good success in the past with Automattic's Akismet. They claim to have a .001% miss rate.
AND its free for personal use (just the way it should be) http://www.akismet.com
A quick google search brought up this plugin: http://plugins.movabletype.org/akismet/ but i'm not sure if you can use that on typepad or not.
I see you complain a lot about comment spam on here, but have never seen Akismet brought up before.
Good Luck!
-RG
Cheers,
Greg
It is the only big blog platform out there that currently provides you with no way of seeing older posts at the bottom of the page (and the familiar "Older" - "Recent" navigation). For people who host ads and get paid by page views this is easy money left on the table). Instead of generating several page views by allow users an easy way to get to the next page of posts most people will just leave the page. Since Typepad has schemes to share ad revenues with bloggers this is also money that Six Apart doesnt get.
They have been promising this forever but it never comes.
Hey, what do we win anyway?
This may be a solution--but a very temporary one.
There is indeed value to the comments in certain old posts - I know of many bloggers whose old posts on a given topic have sparked a small community in the comment threads for a given post (usually on topics hard to find elsewhere online). On my own blog the majority of my comments happen around when I post something - but not uncommonly they pick up again when a post is picked up by another blog.
Shannon
Fred, surely you have come across plenty of older blog posts where the discussion thread has "come back to life" after some time? To unilaterally prevent this from happening is tragic.
A better solution is to simply do a better job filtering spam comments, and to make spam management less of a burden on bloggers. It's not impossible.