I added a comment captcha checkbox to this site last week after multiple weeks of high volumes of spam comments. Here’s how it went.
I really don’t know what made the spambots come out of the woodwork over the past few months. But all of a sudden, I went from almost no comments to a dozen or more a day. That’s very unusual for this blog. So I decided to implement a little comment captcha option. More on that in a minute.
First, I realize the irony in complaining about a sudden jump in comments. Getting lots of comments is very unusual for almost any blog these days. It has certainly been unusual for this blog over the past several years.
I blame social media. There are so many more demands for one’s attention these days. Social media sites like Facebook, X (formally Twitter), Instagram and even newer contenders like Threads and BlueSky want you to visit their sites and stay there. I regularly share content from this site on all of those platforms. Sometimes, they get comments, likes or shares on those platforms.
That type of interaction, it seems, has largely replaced blog comments.
Except for the past month
A funny thing happened in mid-September. I started getting comments. I found several a day, sometimes as many as a dozen. But all of them had either links to adult content, links to content that appeared to be otherwise suspect, or were the kind of nonspecific “praise” many spammers employ.
That latter category satisfies a moderation condition. Some people use a moderation setting that allows future comments after that first comment is approved. Spammers will sometimes leave a generic comment praising what they supposedly read without giving any specifics about why they think it’s so great. An unsuspecting blogger approves that one comment and then, based on their moderation settings, unintentionally allows future comments from the same person.
Unless you have additional moderation settings that prevent hyperlinks, those spammers are then able to post multiple comments across your site with links to adult content or malware.
My comment moderation settings require that I approve all comments no matter who they’re from or how many comments they’ve left in the past.
Over the past month, this site received more than 200 comments. Well, naturally, I immediately recognized there was something off before I even looked at the moderation queue.
I trashed all of the bad comments. But I also realized I needed to do something else so that I didn’t need to waste time moderating a bunch of spam.
The comment captcha experiment seems to be working
In the few days since I implemented the plugin WPDiscuz, things changed dramatically. One of its features is a simple checkbox that one must click to confirm they’re human and not a spambot.
Over the past few days, I’ve only received two comments. One of them came from me when I tested the platform. The other came from a legitimate commenter who actually referred to the post involved. Imagine that!
But I haven’t received a single spam comment since implementing WPDiscuz. So I’d have to call that plugin a success!
I hate the idea of Captcha, but the main reason I do is that trying to decipher those twisty letters or clicking certain tiles in a mosaic that contain specific objects seem like a major inconvenience.
On the other hand, clicking a single checkbox to verify that you actually are human doesn’t seem like that much extra effort to me.
I hope you’ll agree!