It is that time of year again – November 1. I’ve just started my NaBloPoMo commenting challenge and I’ve found quite a few blogs I commented on during last year’s commenting challenge already, how cool is that? I like to do things backwards so I began at the letter Z.
Are You Missing Out On The Fun?
If you have not already signed up for NaBloPoMo but you want to take part you might want to wander over and sign up now.
I can’t believe an entire year has gone by since I found so many wonderful bloggers during the last NaBloPoMo. It’s wonderful to be getting out there and looking at blogs which are completely new to me again.
However there is one downside – Blogger and the Word Verification thing again.
A tip to bloggers who are using blogger –
You’re not going to get spam if you turn word verification off, however you are probably getting a lot less comments with it turned on because often it makes me retype in the words 3 or 4 times – I *almost* give up. The spammers are far too busy targeting WordPress blogs. This blog is less than a month old and already TanTan Noodles has blocked 1278 spam comments. Akismet has blocked 202. I never saw any spam like this when I was on Blogger.
Captcha Word Verification
Blogger users will be familiar with Captcha word verification, it looks like this –
The reason it is exists is to stop spam bots posting comments on your blog. However it could be stopping regular human people from posting on your blog. You only need to turn word verification on when you’re being targeted by a spam bot which is extremely rare on Blogger – as in you’ll be getting a boatload of comments in a very short amount of time – and this will stop the spam bot from posting more comments. May I recommend you turn it off in the meantime? Especially if you moderate your comments before they are posted – no spam comments will be posted because you won’t allow them through, right?
Julie Pippert recently posted about having trouble with Captcha and if you read her post you will see you might be missing out on comments if you’re using it.
Hey, girl! Thanks for stopping by my blog and taking the time to comment. I like the idea of your “comment group.” That’s one of the things I’m not so good about, but I’ll have to try to do better this month.
I like the idea you left about what inspires you — I do the same thing, writing down all kinds of ideas that I can go back to later. I think I’ll have to include that one at some point this month. :)
First – how did I miss the comment challenge group? Anyway, I’m part of it now :)
Second – I agree that the captcha on Blogger blogs is annoying; I think they need to remove whatever timeout they have on it so that when you are writing a somewhat lengthy comment and put the *first* one in, you don’t have to do it again..
Sephyroth
I have exactly the same trouble with precisely the same results. They often try to obscure the letters and if I can’t make it out easily, I give up, too.
There is no captcha on my site and I can count the spam on one hand over the past 13 months.
I hate word verification. Comment moderation works just fine, and I don’t get spammed like crazy. One spam comment every few weeks is not enough justification to turn captcha back on.
I would love to do something for NaBloPoMo, but with a full time boyfriend and full time job, and since I’m traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday to my sister’s house, where internet access is spotty at best, I just can’t commit right now. I’ll be eagerly reading what everyone else does though – then will spend the rest of the year catching up on the posts in my reader!
Very valid point – I get irritated when I type it and it gives an error saying , ‘You have typed it wrong’ – sucks!
Good luck with NaBloPoMo! I was considering it, but decided against it because I won’t be able to post every day and make every post worth it, haha. I’ll start doing “I have nothing to say!” posts. :P
As for the verification things – in fact, I don’t mind the one you did as an example. At least it’s readable. It’s the ones that are curly and have a crazy 80’s background that annoys me. If I get it wrong, I’ll usually leave without commenting.
Love this time of the year, had a ball last time and looking forward to lots more fun this time around. Verification prompts drive me batty.
Alright, have disabled the thing on my blog. When I eventually found how to. LOL. Will see if it makes any difference with how many comments my blog gets. It seems to have gone rather quiet the past few days.
What is the comment challenge group? I clicked on the link and it took me to the group but I wasn’t clear on what I would be committing too. I love leaving comments on other blogs – partly because I always seem to have something to say lol and partly because I know how important a part of a blog they are.
I do not like word verification either. I took it off my blog a long time ago with no increase in spam at all. And I was wondering why the letters are always in a weird font with lots of letters like PQ and ILJ that you cannot tell apart? Or maybe I just need to study my alphabets better.
It drives me crazy too. Actually, I really have to be motivated to comment on a blogspot blog because it’s just painful. I usually get a little window (unless I middle click to force a new tab) and can’t see it all & really hard to refer back to the post. Blogger really ought to make that easier.
AMEN and thanks for the reminders! I especially don’t like those words on backgrounds and serious serif fonts. UGH But also? When you click publish and think you are finished and then get smacked with a new screen asking you to word verify…it’s like insult to injury.
I’ve had ONE spam, and it was a human just spamming blog by blog.
(Like your edit feature for comments.)
Okay here goes NaBloPoMo! I finally took the challenge.
Julie
Using My Words
Ummm come tell me if my comment never appears here? I wrote a sort of long one…
Thanks for commenting on my blog today. Maybe I will try removing the verification and see if my comments go up.
I was all impressed you made it to the “w”s so fast. But if you’re going backwards, well.
Quite an ambitious goal you’ve got, but I imagine you’ll make a lot of friends in the process.
How many blogs are participating?
Hey there from Chicago! I’m a first time NaBloPoMo-er and just joined the comment challenge group. I thought the best place to start commenting would be the group and so I find your blog. I’m looking forward to both challenges–NaBloPoMo and commenting like crazy!