You Can't Appreciate Mollom Until You're Not Using It.
June 10, 2010
I've been using Mollom on all my sites for at least 6-9 months at this point and had completely forgotten about the issues one normally has with spam comments.
Until I updated the sites and forgot to update OpenDepth.com's Mollom module. When upgrading the site, somehow Mollom didn't make it... and as I was about to write something on OpenDepth.com, I found at least 200 spam comments on one entry.
Clearly I fixed that. Quickly. And got Mollom up and running quickly, too.
A simple reminder that there are twits out there who still want to spam. How easy it is to forget what Mollom does.
Comments
#1 Does Mollom block comments that are NOT spam?
Hi Taran,
It is easy to tell whether our spam protection is working to keep comments out but nearly impossible to determine whether it is blocking valid comments from potential clients or regular readers or commentators.
Those of us who have been using Akismet are finding that out the hard way. Any insights into whether Mollom has blocked any real comments? The only way we usually know is if someone contacts us using another method to tell us their comment went astray.
There are a lot of WordPress bloggers who have been using Akismet who are seeking a new way to manage spam without preventing new and existing visitors from contacting us. You can read why in the posts many of us have written about Akismet deleting comments we never even see. http://www.growmap.com/akismet-deleting-comments/
While spam is annoying we have grown increasingly concerned about the use of filters for censoring information. Handing third parties the power to censor what we see is dangerous indeed - especially to those of us who understand the importance of supporting small local and online businesses.