Spam, spam, spam, spam, …

[Reposted/updated from thirty months ago.] There are only two options for any blog. Allow no comments at all; or have a spam-filter that filters what goes into the moderation queue. No way can you moderate by hand all the comments that arrive. For example, since I moved this blog to use WordPress — reports the plug-in at LogicMatters — there have been almost half a million(!) spam postings in the comments here filtered out by Akismet so that I never even see them, never have to deal with them.

Akismet does a quite brilliant job, then. I’m certainly not going to turn it off! But it can occasionally err on the side of sternness. If you try to make a sensible comment here which never gets approved, then it may not be me being unfriendly! If your words of wisdom seem unappreciated, you can always try re-sending them as an email. (If you have had a comment approved before, however, then you should be able to comment without waiting for moderation.)