Comment, trackback, and referrer spam aimed at bloggers is at epidemic proportions. Spam of any nature is a huge headache and is more importantly a waste of bandwidth and time. Blog comment and trackback spam is so much more personal then email spam. If I receive Email spam no one else sees it and Thunderbird catches 99% of it anyway. But comment and trackback spam is a defacing of my cyber-home. It’s analogous to tagging graffiti on the side of my business or home.

So we put protective barriers up around our cyber-homes or businesses to keep out the trouble makers. The problem with these protective barriers is that often they either prevent legitimate visitors from getting in or they place stumbling blocks in front of our doors, making it difficult for our friends to get through.

Binary Bonsai wants to use big swear words, throw things and scream at the top of his lungs because he’s tired of encountering these stumbling blocks. Users of Spam Karma are seeing legitimate comments getting deleted, and visitors are getting upset at wasting time writing comments and never seeing them appear. The Google rel=”nofollow” tag attribute doesn’t seem to of deterred spammers. Binary Bonsai has a possible answer and Tom Raftery has one too. The WordPress Codex has a comprehensive article on combatting comment spam using WordPress and Podz has a similar article but goes into more detail using the different spam protection techniques.

I use Tom’s approach but Binary Bonsai’s method looks much simpler to implement. If you would prefer to use a spam plugin or tool here’s a comprehensive list of comment spam, captcha, trackback spam, and referrer spam Plugins.

Spam is not going anywhere and neither are bloggers so the fight continues. You and I as bloggers need to determine how best to provide a satisfactory user experience while safeguarding our cyber-homes and businesses.

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