3:00 snapshot #848

[urbpan]

Futurama nap.

The new LJ cliche is to complain about spammers, and god DAMN it's getting bad.
Now it's about an 8 to 1 ratio of spam to real comments. I hate the idea of locking my journal, but I'm not sure what else to do. If I did that it would essentially block my journal from my dad. I suppose I just just ignore the spam like everyone else does, and just delete it as I come across it, instead of meticulously deleting every message that comes through. Do those people even sell anything, or are they just making money by having their scam be higher on searches than others (which I assume is the point of posting their stupid links on my journal).

Oh, that reminds me: on the Bugle podcast John Oliver was describing the current roster of GOP presidential candidates and dismissed Rick Santorum as "A Platinum-grade arsehole." I appreciated that.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

You can set up to CAPCHA comments from anon folks, or screen all anon comments or not allow anon comments at all, but allow comments through open ID. I don't know what percentage of spam this will stop.

[morgi.livejournal.com]

I don't post a lot of unlocked posts, but I require a CAPTCHA from anonymous comments, and haven't had any trouble.

[frith]

I never get spam. I get "friended" by Russian spam bots, but I never get spam comments in my journal. Like with cockroaches, you need to know what attracts them. In the case of Livejournal, it's the ease of generating multiple references to a product and thus bump up adverts in Google's search results. The solution: opt your journal out from being indexed by search engines such as Google (assuming you haven't already done so). Uh, no, you haven't, I just checked by searching for "we hiked along Mother Brook" in Yahoo. That means anything I type here can also be found via a search engine. Go to this page in your account settings and put a check mark in the box by "Minimize my journal's inclusion in search engine results" and in the box by "Minimize my comments' inclusion in search engine results". There is no need to set your journal to "private" and make it unavailable to your family or anon posters. Just don't feed the cockroaches. 8^)

If you are feeling adventurous, you could just tick the box by the second one, "Minimize my comments' inclusion in search engine results". That would probably work since the spammers nest in the comments, not the posts. Science!!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I intentionally allow my journal to be searched, because it contains information that non-lj people might find useful. I think I will do the "minimize my comments' inclusion" to make it less useful for spammers. I'm also setting up screening of non-friends comments. Thanks for your help!

[americanbeetles.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I screen/block all anonymous comments and it's worked pretty well. You're right, there's a horrendous torrent of Polish spam, but if you disable or screen anonymous comments, it never shows up.

[momomom.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you have ways that still allow searching because I have seen many comments in your journal from people who came here searching from google on some topic. That may even be true for me because I can't remember how I found you but I've always been so glad I did. I read the foxy grape article yesterday and was just thinking how much I've enjoyed your journal over the years I've been reading it. I think I started during your daily urban species time.

Carla

[roaming.livejournal.com]

heh, my husband naps with his glasses on too!

[stonelizard.livejournal.com]

I can't actually think of anything that would be better than a futurama nap.