Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I Give Up!!!

They finally did it. 

They broke me. 

I held out and held out and tried and tried to deal with the garbage, to suck it up and know that what I was doing was for the greater good, perhaps not to bring about world peace, but peace within my inner circle, and finally had to put my foot down and say enough is enough.  I should have known from the get-go that my grand vision was doomed, my refusal to let them bother me in favor of happy blog readers wouldn't...couldn't...last. 

Spammers.

Blog comments by incessant and tireless robotic pfishing services, asking me to buy Viagra, visit their websites, talk to a sexy woman, grow my man-parts, leaving comments telling me what great content I have, what an informative site, how they've shared it with their brother/cousin/uncle/friend/pet raccoon. 

Innundated.

I remember, about a year ago, caving to requests by people who said Word Verification made commenting on my blog difficult.  And plentiful, happy blog readers are what I want, right? 

Absolutely.

And the very minute I un-checked the box in my settings to remove the dreaded Word Verification option, I realized I'd unleashed Pandora's Box, sold my soul to the lame attempts of robo-advertisers (?), if you can call them that, to suck some poor devil in, to grab them in their clutches and do who-knows-what to them or to their pristine, previously virus-free computer.  Are people really such suckers?  Who reads that stuff, anyway? 

And the first 2 comments came through, captured, in my continued quest to maintain some semblance of control, by my always-enabled author-moderation settings. 

And I knew, even then, that I'd ultimately cave.

And, last week, while on vacation and not consistently checking e-mail, not at all checking my blog or reading others, I managed to amass 72 (seventy-two!!!) spam comments, and not. one. single. legitimate. one.

Which told me 2 things.

1) Word Verification is going back up (I put it up today)

2) I don't get any readers when I'm not posting (well, duh!)

Depressing all-around.

So, Word Verification is back up, and blog posts are being crafted, and hopefully all will be well and sunny again in the blogosphere, for me at least.  And, if you have difficulty leaving comments because of it, please, please keep trying - I'm seriously craving the legitimate blog love these days!!    

 

18 comments:

Violette's Mom said...

I'll still comment...I can't control myself! But I always have a hard time reading these robot-busters! And I'm not a robot.

Tara Willenbrock said...

I always read...faithfully!! But I never comment. But today I will. I LOVE YOUR BLOG!!!

Tara

Dawn said...

I don't know if it works with Blogger, but I use a program called Akismet on my WordPress blog. It stops spam comments from being posted to my blog. You could see if it would work for Blogger as I know how annoying those stupid spammers are. Even if the Akismet doesn't work, I would think there is a program out there that does work with Blogger.

Lisa said...

I'll still comment!

Unknown said...

I hate the spam too. It's ridiculous. I don't mind the word verification actually. What I often do though is write my comment out and then copy it, just in case it gets lost when I go through the verification process.

Unknown said...

i don't normally comment but will today to give you a hug and now ...breathe!!!! xxxxx

Cindy said...

I put word verification on mine for the same reason. I sort of look at it the same way I do relationships. Sometimes due to schedules and such, it's hard to connect with a friend, but when you do, it's SOO worth it!

Anna Theurer said...

stilling commenting! Sorry about the spam -- I can't believe you don't want to grow your man parts or talk to sexy women.

Meg said...

Still read, don't comment much. Keep blogging please!

Unknown said...

Im still here you cant get rid of me that easy!! LOL

Becca said...

Ha! You guys are AWESOME. Thank you! And can I just say what a total breath of fresh air it's been since I posted that and haven't gotten ANY spam? For a YEAR I've been suffering through the junk. Now I just have *real* comments coming through.

JC said...

The word verification has never bothered me. What bothers me is people who complain about it as though it's the worst thing in the world. If you don't want to leave a comment because the word verification bothers you that much and you don't have a spare two seconds in your day to "crack the code", don't bother, problem solved :)

Love your blog Becca!

wendy said...

Word verification doesn't bother me, and I can totally understand , on my emails I get spam everyday and am getting tired of it.

teal915 said...

I did it too a while back, because I was getting so many.

my family said...

i always read your new posts and enjoy them too:) however i do not enjoy the robots/ads on my blog either. i used to have the captcha and maybe I will enable it today:)

Rochelle said...

Always here! Not a robot, although some days I feel like it! LOL!

Unknown said...

URGH I just took my verification down and got 3 spams. I wish Blogger had a box check that people could hit.

Oh and I don't mind the extra work to comment :)

Cari said...

I think there are two issues with the word verification being a problem:

a) some people, like me, have great difficulty reading/interpreting the word and get frustrated and give up.

b) I know some people have trouble posting comments when the verification thing is there, not sure what the issue is but I've heard it from friends especially where blogger is concerned.