Don’t Leave Your Commenters Hanging
November 5th, 2007 by David Bradley >> 4 Comments
Ever tried to comment on a blog and received this message?
Your comment was rejected as an anti-spam measure as your IP address has changed since you viewed the post. Note that this can happen if you are accessing the Internet through a proxy server, or if you disconnected from the Internet and re-connected.
Yeah, me too, just now, twice on two different blogs (blogape and procrastinationblog. That seemed too much of a coincidence, so I assumed it was down to me, typing too slow, or my ISP’s proxy running bad, something, anything. But, it turns out it’s not. Apparently, this message is generated by WordPress blogs running a comment timeout plugin. The plugin is meant to protect the site against comment spam. (Stick with Akismet it’s the best). However, a bug or some other problem means that even legitimate commentators sometimes see the blocking message.
Now, I don’t know about you but I didn’t feel my comments on those two blogs were worth repeated attempts when the error message seemed to appear every time, so I’m afraid their authors have lost me forever, I won’t bother trying again, I won’t grab their RSS feed, and I’ll simply move on. Harsh? But, the usual response from the majority of visitors to a site or blog faced with an error message, you can betcha. If you’re running any plugins, but especially comment timeout, check that they’re not affecting your comments form, you could be missing out on a great discussion with your readers if they are.
By the way, if you’re seeing this post as an incoming link in your dashboard, chances are you’re the owner of blogape or procrastinationblog. Time to fix your site, guys.
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Leave a comment ↓
Robert Irizarry // Nov 6, 2007 at 11:26 pm
David – I read this post with great interest as I have been looking at several comment related plugins. Do you know which one specifically caused this issue?
BTW – As far as anti-spam plugins, I’ve found Spam Karma to be effective and there’s even an add-on for it that will send a comment through Akismet under certain circumstances.
David Bradley // Nov 7, 2007 at 11:18 am
Robert, I should have been more specific, it’s the plugin – Comment Timeout. Hope that helps.
Robert Irizarry // Nov 7, 2007 at 7:38 pm
That helps a great deal! I was considering this plugin as a means to combat trackback spam to older posts. Given the problem you’ve indicated, it’s no longer an option.
I’ve also been giving thought to whether or not its wise to close off older posts to readers. I’ve been thinking about the way most forums work, since many of my potential visitors are already familiar with forums, and threads are almost never closed.
One quick note – so far so good with using Spam Karma with the Akismet add-on. Spam Karma was doing an excellent job already but the add-on has taken it up another notch.
David Bradley // Nov 7, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Why do bloggers close off commenting on older posts? If it’s only to beat comment spam, then a better option is to install better spam filters. People hit a site from many disparate entry points. An old post may suddenly rank well in the SERPs, or you may want to reference it in a new post, so I feel it’s a good idea to leave comments open indefinitely. You never know what invaluable comments a new contributor to one’s site might make.