spam control: anonymous commenting no longer allowed

[dbskyler]

I've allowed anonymous comments (with initial screening) on my journal since the beginning. I think it's kind of nice, it goes with an open journal (which this mostly is), and a few anonymous commenters have dropped in and said interesting and/or relevant things, which I've appreciated.

Unfortunately, there's been a huge uptick in anonymous spam lately, to the point where I am getting very tired of continuously deleting it. So until further notice, I have disabled anonymous commenting in this journal.

Sorry to the anonymous commenters who are actually commenting. Hopefully this won't be a permanent situation, but it will depend on whether LJ gets a handle on this problem or not.

Comments

[ghost2.livejournal.com]

I've been receiving more anonymous spam comments than usual lately too, especially on the post where I talk about the general quality of Twilight fanfic. Hmmm. Anyway, I don't know how much LJ can do about it. I rarely get legit anonymous comments anyway, so it would make very little difference if I banned anon posting. I haven't yet, though. Interestingly, I did receive two valid anonymous comments today from someone who went to Chicago TARDIS and read one of my posts about it.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Every single spam comment I've received has been on an old entry (from several weeks to several months ago). So I think the spam is pretty clearly being made by bots, and while I don't know anything about how bots operate, I do expect LJ to know. Even if bots are difficult to separate from real people, I could almost write code myself to block the spam I've received so far (old entries plus links in the comment), so I don't think it's too much to be expecting LJ to do something about it.

I don't often get anonymous comments either, but it's like a special little gift when I do. However, the spam has been really driving me crazy, and I had to take the action I could.