Fight Comment Spam Without Locking Out Your Readers
If you are a blogger, you hate comment spam. Unless you are a spam blogger, in which case we'll assume you're not reading this page anyway.
The current fad is to protect blogs from comment spam with squiggly letters and numbers that people have to type in to prove they're people and not web robots trying to sell you Viagra. These little boxes are one type of CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.
CAPTCHAs don't have to be in this format. As the name implies, all the CAPTCHA needs to do is distinguish you from a computer in an automated way. CAPTCHAs can be visual, auditory, text-based question and answer, logic puzzles, or any other computer-generated test that would serve this purpose. It just so happens that the squiggly letters type is very popular right now.
As you might guess, though, visual CAPTCHAs are impossible to solve for people with no vision or those using text-only web browsers, and may be frustrating or impossible for people with low vision, dyslexia, or other learning disabilities. If you have a visual CAPTCHA on your blog and there is no alternative, you are barring some of your visitors from commenting. Visual CAPTCHAs with audio alternatives are not perfect, but they're a step in the right direction.
What You Can Do
Your blog is your property, and you have the right to keep spammers off your property. But before resorting to CAPTCHAs, try every other tool your blog software offers to reduce or eliminate comment spam.
With hosted blogs, you're limited to what your blogging software provides:
WordPress.com and LiveJournal don't even offer a visual CAPTCHA option. In LiveJournal, if you require commenters to be signed in, the account creation process requires passing a visual CAPTCHA with an audio alternative. Vox, which also has no visual CAPTCHA for commenting, requires passing a visual CAPTCHA with no alternative in order to create an account.
TypePad offers a more limited number of choices for spam control beyond the CAPTCHA, though they maintain a master list behind the scenes that blocks some spam for you. To improve their list, you have the option of reporting spam comments and trackbacks as spam. If you often receive spam comments that include specific keywords, you can block those comments by adding the keyword under Control Panel > Site Access > Word and IP Banning. If you don't mind forcing your commenters to sign in, you can also set up your blog so it only accepts comments from people who are signed in with Typekey. Although signup for a Typekey account does require passing a visual CAPTCHA with no audio alternative, at least it only has to be done once.
Blogger Beta offers a visual CAPTCHA (called "word verification") with an audio alternative. If you don't mind forcing your commenters to sign in, you can instead set up your blog so it only accepts comments from people who are registered with Blogger. Although signup for a Blogger account does require passing the visual or audio CAPTCHA, at least it only has to be done once.
With software you install, you have more options.
Movable Type:
- Movable Type 3.x and 4.x come with the SpamLookup plugin, which you may be able to tune to filter out much of your comment spam. See Making the Most of Spam Lookup for details.
- If you only accept comments from people who are signed in with Typekey, be aware that signup for a Typekey account requires passing a visual CAPTCHA.
- My own relief from comment spam in 3.x came when I installed Jay Allen's Comment Challenge plugin, a non-visual CAPTCHA.
- Since I upgraded to 4.x, I want to marry the Akismet plugin because it has almost completely de-spammed my blogs.
- 4.x users may want to investigate the reCAPTCHA plugin. While not perfect, it has an audio alternative, and the reCAPTCHA development team has really reached out to the blind community to improve their CAPTCHA.
WordPress:
WordPress has a number of options within the Dashboard for commenting plugin spam, and you can also use a variety of plugins. See Combating Comment Spam for details about both strategies and links to more resources.
WordPress does have some CAPTCHA plugins, including some non-visual options, but if Akismet works as well in its original WP incarnation as it does in its Movable Type then you should be all set.
If All Else Fails, Complain
Not to me, not to your readers, but to the people who make your blogging software. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place, forced to choose between allowing ALL of your readers to comment and being buried in comment spam. That's not cool.
If you've tried everything else and still need the CAPTCHA to protect your blog, that doesn't make you a bad person. However, you need to provide feedback to the people who make your software. If they don't know that people care about including their readers who have disabilities, they won't prioritize solving these problems.
So especially if you're paying for the service, complain.
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