On a good day, I mark 5-10 comment spam. On an average day, 20. That is out of thousands of comment spams that actually land on my site. Akismet gets the rest so I see it as a small price to pay. Spammers job is to get through things like Akismet. 20 out of three thousands is a small price to pay in time. In the past year, though, that average has dropped down, so I spend less and less time cleaning up the things that get through. Love that!

I do not have email notification set on Lorelle on WordPress. I do so on many of my other sites. The older the site, the more prominent, the more spam. Comment spam is generated on sites with incoming links. The fewer incoming links, the less spam. Bots follow the links and humans spammers follow the bots. I spend less than 30 seconds on comment spam daily across all of my personal sites. I’ve got it down to a craft.

John Doan has a mailing list and site announcement list, so make sure you sign up. I don’t manage that for him. And when you get closer, let me know. Be sure and get on the WordPress PDX Meetup list for announcements as well as you will get a lot out of their invaluable meetings. Fantastic group!

“looks like you are doing whatever it takes to make this work” Persistence in hunting obscure bugs is part of my genetic make-up, it seems. Often, it is better (from a keeping-sane perspective and from a dollars-n-hours-spent perspective simultaneously) to let it go… but part of the point of open-source software like wordpress is that, if something is bugging you, there ought to be a way to get it fixed. So I like to see things get fixed.

“If you learn something, let me know!” I will post back here, if I get any progress. But at the moment, from looking through the comment-history-stuff and from my memory of some particular instances of this trouble, I believe what is causing the most confusion is the definition of ‘first time’ commenter. My blog has the box checked that first-time-commenters must go into the moderation-queue, until approved by an admin. However, from what I can see, when a commenter changes *any* of the profile-fields for their comments (userhandle/URL/email/IP and maybe even avatar), at that point wordpress considers them to be a ‘new’ and different user… even if the email and IP are the same as before… which, of course, likely indicates the commenter is in fact the same human. Lesson being, if you have people annoyed at getting stuck back in moderation, even though they were approved in the past and therefore ought not to be moderated anymore, search for comments based on their email-address, and see if they changed their userhandle or URL, or if their ISP changed their IP address. Those might be the cause. (I can remove the ‘might’ once I have seen the PHP responsible for the implementation of the first-time-moderation rule.)

“I get 2-4 comments in moderation a year” Okay… and if the settings were adjusted, to allow first-time-comments to go directly to the main page, I expect my troublesome blog would also see far fewer entries in the moderation queue. Of the thousands of spam-comments you get per day, how many make it past akismet and onto your actual publicly-visible blog, so that you have to mark-as-spam them manually?

Put another way, how many hours can you afford to ignore your email-notifications of new posts, before your blog-comments become spam-laden enough to be annoying? I realize one spam is *annoying* to you and your commenters… but does it take six hours before the buildup of spam is *so* annoying that you find it really starts to grate, and detracts from the good content? For me, when more than about 10% of the comments are spam — or maybe even 20% spam if the rest of the comment are top-notch — reading past them starts to become painful.

“harp guitar” Form#3A, apparently! Very neat. http://www.harpguitars.net/history/org/hgorg2.htm

“in Forest Grove… It’s delightful. Let me know if you’d like to join us.” Like to, absolutely, able to, not in 2012. I expect to be about a day’s drive to the south of you in 2013, however, and will be sure to head to the land of the harp guitar (aka Oregon) at some point. If you have a listserv or meetup or somesuch to organize these, add my email onto the bottom of the announcement-group, por favor.

Hard to follow but it looks like you are doing whatever it takes to make this work. By rarely, I’d say that I get two, maybe four comments in moderation a year. All of them are spam. I get dozens of comments on a daily basis and thousands of comment spam daily. I wish I was kidding.

If this continues to be of concern, please contact WordPress.com forum support. They can better assist you. Maybe something isn’t set right on your site behind the curtain. Good luck with it! If you learn something, let me know!

As for the copy editing, thank you. My rates still run from $100-$500 an hour depending upon the service. I offer a site review for 1 hour at $100.

There are many harp guitar variations. We’re putting together a group to go see several of these on Saturday in Forest Grove. We’re meeting at the Grand Lodge for dinner at 6PM and the show is at 7:30PM at the Pacific University. John Doan is doing his annual Victorian Christmas Concert, a family tradition where he plays all kinds of instruments in a story-telling show about the evolution of the Parlor and music. It’s delightful. Let me know if you’d like to join us.

Thanks.

“Check Settings > Discussion” — yes, many times

“there are many reasons and some of them have nothing to do with WordPress nor Akismet.” — well, if not those two, then what could be causing it? this is wordpress.com so we have no custom code or non-standard plugins. What else might cause a comment to go into moderation?

“moderated first by the administrator” — this is turned off

“moderate all first time commenters” — yes, turned on, but held-for-moderation happens to non-first-time-commenters (by my definition of ‘first’ time commenters… which is based on their email….) We have mostly repeat-commenters, and in particular, those are the ones that get annoyed.

“the threshold of non-compliance and doubt” — that matches my experience with the moderation-queue perfectly, but I’d like to sweep away some of that feeling of doubt from the pit of my stomach… about how exactly the moderation queue is *supposed* to work, and why I cannot get it to Do What I Mean. [grin]

“moderated if it has two or more links in it” — ours is now bumped to 10, did not help

“keywords that do not comply with “standards,” which are actually fairly weak” — where can I find more on this vague set of standards? I assume you mean four-letter-words dubbed obscene in some cultures? We don’t have that problem at present, or at least, not in the held-for-moderation comments I’m speaking of.

“They are probably annoyed that you take too long to approve” — yes, but the workload is too high for the blog admin, especially when it happens to repeat-commenters that are the most precious resource a discuss-amongst-yourselves blog can have.

“setting notifications to be notified whenever a comment is in the moderation queue” — yes, this is on, but the admin is not always by their inbox, and the repeat-commenters that suddenly get ‘held’ are annoyed as soon as it happens to them (because it often seems to interrupt their ongoing conversation)

“I do that often but it rarely triggers.” — the blog admin in question is getting several per day… is that what you mean by rarely?

“Also, don’t trust yourself to really tell if a comment is legit until you are more experienced.” — this is good advice, but the problem is not people we suspect might be spammers, the problem is people we *know* are not spammers that are getting held for an unknown reason. (Checking in the comment-history it says that akismet cleared their comment… so that suggests it is not spambait… unless there is another antispam plugin that is silently helping wordpress.com blogs stay clean, that I have not heard about?)

“sounding like they are part of the conversation” — spammers are eeevvviilll. But these folks *are* part of the conversation, right up until they get mysteriously held for moderation. Arrrgh.

“Maybe these are questionable comments that look legit, but WordPress and Akismet just isn’t quite certain.” — possibly, but if so, I’d rather configure the blog to push them onto the actual public page, not hold them in the queue. If they are possibly spam, or if they have 11+ hyperlinkks, or if they are a first-time commenter, then hold them in the spam-folder. But the comments getting held tend to have no hyperlinks at all, and no spam keywords either. (I’ve been detecting spam for many moons now. If the bayesian filters in Akismet were *that* tight, then all sorts of comments would be held in moderation as false positives. And besides, the comment-history says that akismet cleared the comment… it just fails to say *why* the comment was held for moderation.)

“I hate that we have to even fuss over spammers” — agreed

“It takes all of us to fight them. Thanks!” — doubly agreed, and my thanks to you, for caring about making the internet a better place for the good eggs. It is much appreciated.

They are *not* used to seeing the ‘your comment is awaiting moderation’ message… because that only applies the first time they comment… so when they *do* see it, they wonder if they’ve done something wrong, and the blog-administrator is mad at them, or trying to censor them! The blog-topic is mostly concerned with tyranny in politics… so censorship is already a hot-button topic… and when you are boldly decrying how government censorship will soon destroy the internet, it is disconcerting to have your comments ‘held for moderation’ all of the sudden. [grin]

Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article == check
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) == check
Allow people to post comments on new articles == check

Comment author must fill out name and e-mail == check
Users must be registered and logged in to comment == UNCHECKED
Automatically close comments on articles older than 14 days == UNCHECKED
Enable threaded (nested) comments 3 levels deep == check
Break comments into pages with 50 top level comments per page and the last page displayed by default == UNCHECKED
Comments should be displayed with the older comments at the top of each page == older

E-mail me whenever Anyone posts a comment == check
E-mail me whenever A comment is held for moderation == check
E-mail me whenever Someone likes one of my posts == check
E-mail me whenever Someone reblogs one of my posts == check
E-mail me whenever Someone follows my blog == check

Before a comment appears An administrator must always approve the comment == UNCHECKED
Before a comment appears Comment author must have a previously approved comment == checked
Comment Moderation, Don’t discard spam on old posts == unchecked [aka *do* discard spam on old posts... poor wording! where do I file a usability bug?]
Hold a comment in the queue if it contains N or more links == 10 [tried bumping this up from default of 2... did not help]
Keywords to hold in the moderation queue == [an IP address in dotted-quad numeric form... no accidental blanklines/spaces]
Comment Blacklist == [totally empty... no blanklines/spaces/nada]

Show a ‘follow comments” option in the comment form == check
Show a ‘follow blog’ option in the comment form == check
Show Avatars == check
View people’s profiles when you mouse over their Gravatars == check
Maximum Rating == G
Default Avatar == Identicon (Generated)
Prompt == Leave a Reply

Anyways, your advice to just relax and go with the flow is not at all inappropriate… but I am resisting the urge to take that advice, because I want things to 100% work. Certainly the comment-system works 99% of the time, literally — only about one comment in 100 is held for moderation (incorrectly). Each blog-post gets about 500 comments, though, which means there are a handful of comments which are incorrectly held… and often the person is a long-time commenter, the exact sort of person we want to keep from accidentally offending. So, I’m trying to track down the trouble. I know PHP, so I even opened up the wordpress SVN to see if I could find the trouble, but the GPL’d code I was able to access did *not* match what I’m seeing in the wordpress.com backend software. Do you know if there is anything special I have to do at wordpress.org to see the PHP code which is currently deployed onto the wordpress.com webservers? Or perhaps, is that specific version of the codebase not really open-source?

Maybe some specific examples of the trouble will help. We have a longtime user, with the handle BigTom and (faked to protect the guilty) email address bigtom@hotmail with an IP that isn’t the one on the greylist, and a blank URL. He’s posted five comments already, but comment number six, he changes from BigTom to simply Tom as his userhandle. Therefore, is his comment#6 going to be held for moderation, even though his URL/email/identicon/IP stuff are all still exactly the same as before? Looking at the comment history, I cannot tell: all is says is, 2 days ago – Akismet cleared this comment, 22 hours ago – admin changed the comment status to approved. We had another enduser, that left the email/ip/userhandle the same, but changed from their twitter_URL over to their new blog_URL … would that small change cause them to be held for moderation? They are not logged into the blog they are commenting on, but doesn’t wordpress still keep a cookie to detect when they are the same person, just updating their info? Or if you change any of the fields, suddenly wordpress thinks you are a brand new enduser?

However, no matter what the behavior is for ‘first time’ users that have commented often, but recently changed some field… should there ever be a case where a user that has changed none of their fields is held for moderation? I believe, but have not yet proven with my own eyes, that we have endusers that get held for moderation without changing their fields, without exceeding link-limits, and without being a first-time-commenter. If so, is that a bug? What about changing your userhandle, but not changing your email… would it be considered a bug, to have that person held for moderation, as if they were a ‘first-time-commenter’, even though their email is unchanged? I would read the code myself to find out the answer, but I would like to be reading the *correct* PHP code, see my question above about where to find the correct tag or branch in SVN.

Either way… short of acquiring a sysadmin and a webhost and a domain-name and such, for the purpose of hosting my own copy of the wordpress.org codebase that I can tweak to my satisfaction, is there any way to increase the comment-history-detail for my blog on wordpress.com — so that is says *why* something was held in the moderation-queue? At the moment, I can tell which comments were held there at one point (by the mention in the history that an admin changed their status), but I cannot see the reason they were held in the first place. There are advantages to staying with wordpress.com that are nontrivial, so I’d rather keep it there if possible… but I’d also rather not be tied hand-and-foot to my email account, waiting to approve pending comments. I suppose I could write a script that runs server-side, on the host which keeps the email, and detects moderation-queue requests, and automatically approves them? But that sounds like almost as much work as getting a sysadmin to do the webhosting for the blog itself….

p.s. Very much appreciate you taking the time to help me along — let me know if the size or scope of my detailed questions exceeds what your blog-comments are intended to address! I cannot yet contact you bearing money, as your contact-page so tactfully mentions, but I will certainly keep you in mind should I ever have such a need, and recommend you to those that I know. In the meantime, in return I can offer some small assistance in the form of typo-checking services: lorelle.wordpress.com/contact … should read $100-125/hr because $500 bucks divided by 4 hours is $125/hr. Also, in the category-blurb at the top of this page … lorelle.wordpress.com/category/blogging-tips … CompuServer should be CompuServe. Oh — and I appreciate the invite to Thankful Thanksgiving. If you are still doing something similar in 2013, please add my email to the list, and if I’m in the area, I’ll ask you just exactly what is *wrong* with that guitar in the picture… way too many strings on that thing…. [grin]

Begin by checking to see if comments are set to be moderated first by the administrator. If they are, then that explains it.

Also check to see if you have the setting set that moderates all first time commenters. If so, then when they comment for the first time, it is moderated. Change it if you wish to not moderate the comments and you have more first time commenters than repeat.

A comment goes into moderation when it meets the threshold of non-compliance and doubt which we can guess at but the machines can’t always get perfectly. By default, the general rule is that a comment will be moderated if it has two or more links in it, keywords that do not comply with “standards,” which are actually fairly weak, or meets the settings on the Discussion panel for moderation.

Are your commenters annoyed? They are probably annoyed that you take too long to approve their comment. Consider setting notifications to be notified whenever a comment is in the moderation queue so you can respond faster. I do that often but it rarely triggers.

Also, don’t trust yourself to really tell if a comment is legit until you are more experienced. We are so often mislead by the human spammers that say kind things, promise to bookmark our sites, and praise us by sounding like they are part of the conversation when they are not really. Spammers have to be smarter than we are to figure out how to get past our guard. Maybe these are questionable comments that look legit, but WordPress and Akismet just isn’t quite certain.

Check yours settings and relax a little. Make it easier on yourself and it will work itself out. I know it is annoying. All of this is frustrating. I hate that we have to even fuss over spammers, but we are just soldiers in the battle against them. It takes all of us to fight them. Thanks!

Is there any way to figure out *why* a comment was put into the moderation-queue? The reason it was marked by wordpress-settings or akismet-bayesian-ness for the moderation-queue, in other words. I’ve already checked and re-checked the panel-settings, and the problem is not too many hyperlinks, or hitting on a moderation-keyword, or other options under my control. Comments are getting into the moderation-queue even when they are from people that have commented before successfully, even when they have zero hyperlinks (including the comment-author-link), and without any trigger-words of any sort… which means I’m at a loss to figure out how to keep them from being put into the moderation-queue, since I cannot fathom *why* they were moderated in the first place. Annoying to the people making the comment, too, of course.

Perhaps there is an option I do not realize is under my control… so maybe a more general question will help me figure out my troubles: how *do* I configure my wordpress.com blog so that comments are never sent to the moderation queue? Either they are spam, and put in the spam-folder, or they are allowed through to the main page.

That behavior isn’t what I want, really, since I *want* comments with N-or-more hyperlinks to be put into the moderation-queue, and comments with moderation-keywords to be put in the moderation-queue, and so on… but maybe listing the config-settings to get this behavior will help me figure out what setting I’m missing, or at least, pinpoint that I’m not missing a setting, and that something else is wrong. Fighting spam is frustrating, but fighting false positives is *very* frustrating. Best, ___j___