Maintenance: LJ Spam Follow-Up
Wow. You guys certainly turned out in droves last week to share your thoughts on LJ's spam issue, as well whether or not you'd follow me to Word Press if I closed up the LJ shop.
So let me make one thing clear: I am not closing the LJ.
However, you all know you're in trouble, right? over 70 people voted in the poll, which means that for future polls, especially the one where you dare me to read something? I expect bigger turn-outs than the 15-25 people I've been getting!
Now that that's out of my system, let's talk spam and some things I'm doing to combat it. These are things you can also try if you're on LJ, but what works for me may not work for you.
I'm dropping anonymous commenting. This won't work for communities, because those settings are determined by the moderators, but I'm reducing the number of community posts I make anyway. For my own blog, however, ever since LJ has introduced OpenID commenting and the like, it's easier for non-LJ people to interact with me in this space, which means the only time I get anonymous commenters are either from spammers or people who've forgotten to log in when they comment. By disallowing anonymous commenters, that's kicking some of the problem right in the butt.
To change your commenting settings, or to at least see what your settings are, go to Profile -> Settings -> Privacy. There, you can decide who's allowed to comment to your posts, whether or not those comments will be screened before they go public, and if you're really having trouble, you can CAPTCHA to the commenting process. I thought that having it for anonymous commenters only would fix the problem, but unfortunately, when I went to update my settings, CAPTCHA was already turned on for anonymous commenters, so I'm not sure how effective that really is. I don't want to use CAPTCHA for people who are already signed up for LJ, because part of the convenience of LJ is that you don't have to fool with that sort of thing. However, everyone's different.
That's the major change I'm making for the time being. However, there are some other things you can look at if you too are having spam problems. Just go to the privacy settings page I referenced earlier, you can decide:
1) What your security settings are. Who can see your entries? Everyone? Friends only? Or just you?
2) Search inclusion and comment search inclusion: you can minimize how often your posts and comments to your posts show up in search engines. That might limit the number of people who find your blog, but it may limit the number of spammers who find it too.
3) Content promotion: do you want your public entries promoted on LJ's site?
That's just the tip of the iceberg, really, but if you haven't sat down and reviewed your privacy settings and the like, now would be a great time to make sure your LJ is being promoted or protected according to your wishes. The choices you make may or may not protect you from an ungodly amount of spam, and remember, if there's one thing we can ALL do, it's contact LJ directly and complain about the amount of spam we've been getting.
I hope this helps those of you who are experiencing the same problems as me. As for everyone else, rest assured, I'm not going anywhere unless I actually stop blogging, so for now, don't worry about me leaving. But please, if you're reading the blog, vote in the other polls! :)
So let me make one thing clear: I am not closing the LJ.
However, you all know you're in trouble, right? over 70 people voted in the poll, which means that for future polls, especially the one where you dare me to read something? I expect bigger turn-outs than the 15-25 people I've been getting!
Now that that's out of my system, let's talk spam and some things I'm doing to combat it. These are things you can also try if you're on LJ, but what works for me may not work for you.
I'm dropping anonymous commenting. This won't work for communities, because those settings are determined by the moderators, but I'm reducing the number of community posts I make anyway. For my own blog, however, ever since LJ has introduced OpenID commenting and the like, it's easier for non-LJ people to interact with me in this space, which means the only time I get anonymous commenters are either from spammers or people who've forgotten to log in when they comment. By disallowing anonymous commenters, that's kicking some of the problem right in the butt.
To change your commenting settings, or to at least see what your settings are, go to Profile -> Settings -> Privacy. There, you can decide who's allowed to comment to your posts, whether or not those comments will be screened before they go public, and if you're really having trouble, you can CAPTCHA to the commenting process. I thought that having it for anonymous commenters only would fix the problem, but unfortunately, when I went to update my settings, CAPTCHA was already turned on for anonymous commenters, so I'm not sure how effective that really is. I don't want to use CAPTCHA for people who are already signed up for LJ, because part of the convenience of LJ is that you don't have to fool with that sort of thing. However, everyone's different.
That's the major change I'm making for the time being. However, there are some other things you can look at if you too are having spam problems. Just go to the privacy settings page I referenced earlier, you can decide:
1) What your security settings are. Who can see your entries? Everyone? Friends only? Or just you?
2) Search inclusion and comment search inclusion: you can minimize how often your posts and comments to your posts show up in search engines. That might limit the number of people who find your blog, but it may limit the number of spammers who find it too.
3) Content promotion: do you want your public entries promoted on LJ's site?
That's just the tip of the iceberg, really, but if you haven't sat down and reviewed your privacy settings and the like, now would be a great time to make sure your LJ is being promoted or protected according to your wishes. The choices you make may or may not protect you from an ungodly amount of spam, and remember, if there's one thing we can ALL do, it's contact LJ directly and complain about the amount of spam we've been getting.
I hope this helps those of you who are experiencing the same problems as me. As for everyone else, rest assured, I'm not going anywhere unless I actually stop blogging, so for now, don't worry about me leaving. But please, if you're reading the blog, vote in the other polls! :)