Why Does My Comment Not Show
I seem to get a email every other day from people about there commenting not appearing. I should probably explain how I handle comments.
I really think comments make or break a blog for the author. Honestly if it wasn’t for the feedback (positive and negative) it would be pretty boring to blog. So my goal is to make commenting as painless as possible for users to express there opinions.
Now sure that sounds great and all but this blog is something I do in my free time… so.. that becomes a issue. It also means that there are a lot of things going on “behind the scenes” when a comment is placed so there can be a balence of ease of use yet good comment moderation.
So here is how my comments work. When a user comments its first checked against the akismet plugin that installs with wordpress. Now this plugin is not perfect so I use dillsmacks akismet white list to allow users to comment that are banned in akismet (like Danny Sullivan lol ).
The first custom check I do is check the comment/ip/username against a local_blacklist. I work together with a few other webmasters to develop a black_list of ips and emails of users who are jackasses. Its well labeled and all of those comments go straight in the can.
Next it checks to see if this user has ever commented before. If they have not it puts the comment in the moderation que. If they have it goes to the next check.
The simplest check is for outbound urls. Any comment containing any link is held no for moderation no matter what. This is just a catchall check.
Then it checks the comment for over 500 different word combinations. These 500 word combinations are not necessarily spam but just thinks in general that someone needs to look at before its approved. I would say probably 98% of the time these are approved within a hour or so but again its just items I have flagged that someone needs to look at before approving. Some examples of these are companies I own, racial slurs, swear words and stuff like that. Reason I flag companies I own is many times I want to know if someone has a comment on a company I own and possibly I like to follow up with them. The racial slur check rarely has a match and when it does its not always used as a racial slur. Swear words for the most part go through unless its extremely vulgar.
Recently with the top comm enters thing attracting a lot of spammers I built in a custom check to calculate a little algorithm of my own which takes into account the length of comment mixed with average time in between comments and automatically blacklists people who break that threashold. So if you see someone who goes from 40 to zero comments thats why. Its always pretty obvious when people get greedy and start commenting on every post with “yeah” or “I agree”… I think this upsets some webmasters when people try to game their system… Me? I enjoy it! I love writing tools to find anomalies and do fraud detection. Its what I did for 5 years as the lead security engineer for one of the biggest banks in the world.
5 people have the ability to approve comments on this blog. I only approve about 10% and really the only ones I approve are ones they think I need to see for business purposes. If your comment does not show and you think your banned by Akismet or something else shoot me a line and I or someone else can look into it.
Anyway hope this clears up some stuff if anyone cared 
- 38 Comments. What say you?
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Good to post about this. You might save yourself some email if you linked to this post so newbies can read it and understand.
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Sort of off topic, but why is Danny Sullivan banned by akismet? How does one go about getting banned by akismet?
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I’ve tried and have always been banned.
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Ok, maybe not any more!
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If you keep commenting with different url’s you can get banned. To get unbanned just delete cookies & change IP and don’t comment using the banned url again.
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This is my first comment here (i think), so it will go to the moderation queue. Anyway, i think its interesting to learn about this aspect of blogging that many have not thought about. I suppose many do not receive THAT many comments to be too concerned about this right now. I hope my blog will eventually get there though and i’ll be sure to use your strategies!
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I’d be great if you shared the whitelists and the word combinations… I’ve found that no automated solution works the way I expect it to, so these lists are the only way of tailoring filters to ones needs.
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I knew there was some voodoo going on in the background because sometimes my comment would show right up, while other times it would take a day. I know you had a system in place, so I didn’t really care if some showed up and others did not.
Have you ever thought of releasing a Shoemoney spam detector plugin?
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thats a cool way to set it up man. I do more simple approval denial on mine. but to each his own as you got to use what works for you.
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I had no idea that some prominent people were banned on Akismet. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll second the comments up top about sharing the whitelist.
It may also be a good idea to show the user a “your comment is awaiting approval”. May cut down on some of the emails.
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That’s interesting, because i was one of the people wondering why my well-thought out comments weren’t showing up. But i didn’t email you though, i figured they were waiting to be moderated. Good info though clears up a lot of confusion.
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Good information that stops potential problems..
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Good information that stops potential problems.
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I also had absolutely no idea - and I use Askimet on my blog as well.
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Nothing ironic here, move along.
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Whew now I know my comment were not on snail delivery
Vijay
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pheww, I thought it would be my ISP provider problem when I want to comment on your security or freedom post.Nice to do that Shoemoney.
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Wow sounds complex but when you have a blog like this you really need to go through all these steps. Some of your tools sound pretty cool, gonna release any of those?
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Yes, some of those precautions do seem complex, but it is good if it makes your blog easier to run (and less friendly with spammers). I would also be interested if you released any of these scripts, especially the custom check. If you have the time, you could make it into a plugin and probably build some links and exposure through it.
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Do you have any problems with a person continuously changing their name to the name of their different posts?
Example: If my latest post title is “8 Soap Suds that Taste Great” and I enter that under Name. Then I link the URI to that post. Then I do it all over again with a different post.
I didn’t realize there was so much to this and I do that all the time. Am I pissing people off? Should I quit doing it? Thanks.
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yeah! I agree!!!
ops…
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Its funny. I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday b/c one of my comments was held in que then released later in the day. I forget which one but I was wondering what the system formula is and you answered w/o me even asking… thanks jeremy.
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i last dropped my comment here long ago. i don’t know if i am banned already or not. so this comment is to check if i am already banned.
well, shoemoney got better idea on avoiding spams to go into this section. in my blog i am always moderating those comments failed to block by akismet
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I was also emailing Jeremy and it looks like I was banned for some time.
But you realy did greate job with the plugin. Is it somwhere for download?
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I’ve noticed the hold up sometimes. Sometimes I try to word things so they won’t get held up.
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I’m surprised that Akismet doesn’t catch everything for you - I get huge amounts of spam to one of my blogs (but hardly any to the others, which is very odd) and perhaps one or two a week manage to get past it.
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If he would share it than there someone started to cheat.
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I hope that you don’t delete my comment. I attend every of your post… I am just feel sorry if commenting somebody post is wrong
But I hope that by commenting a post, we could tell everyone else of what we are thinking 
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thats why I dont use akismet
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I’m amazed at how much “trouble” you have to go through to avoid spam.
I guess you aren’t part of the NoFollow-movement anymore either then.
I saw that Wendy Piersall removed it from her site too, due to too much spam. Curse though momos that are infecting the blog sphere.
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i can’t stand spammers spamming my blog, I just had that plugin installed
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Hey I’m glad you posted about this because a friend of mine kept bugging me why his comment was not showing up on here. That is how I found your blog lol. My response was ” Well I dont know but I bet it’s awaiting moderation”.
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so far i’ve had very good luck with akismet with some of my blogs. i haven’t had a need to do any intense moderation yet as my comments haven’t taken off, but having been a webmaster for several years i can respect the need and desire to filter out the jackasses.
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Wow, that’s a very scientific way to look at it. I thought you went with gut feeling to everything. Was I wrong…
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It’s really hard for those of us who want to replace their jobs with something new and who have tried and are now struggling to earn mortgage money on the internet by getting traffic to our sites.
Every time you read an article about how to promote your website and try to apply what you’ve read, someone else comes along and tells you that it isn’t that easy. An example would be commenting on this blog. I read an SEO article just recently that said it’s a great idea to find a high ranking blog and post on it. Now I’m finding that even if you find a high ranking blog, your post has to jump through many hoops, be reviewed, washed and dried before it is even considered and even after that, it won’t always get posted! I surely hope I am not on some blacklist somewhere because I am innocent if I am! I don’t even know how to get on a blacklist.
Urrrgggggg. It get’s very frustrating out here on the internet as I am not trying to make “shoe money” but am trying to make mortgage payments. So please, if you can find it in your heart, post my comment? My posting on your blog may not make my mortgage payment but it might help to drive some traffic to my site, thus helping me to make some of the money back that I paid to get this advice in the first place! Thanks so much for your great info on this site too. I’m really enjoying it. I wish I was a 13 year old affiliate marketer too.
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I was just noticing the same. Some comments get approved and are visible instantly on the website, while others are not, especially those which contain a link. Great screening ShoeMoney!
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Yeah, I was thinking of having a top commenters thing on my blog but the spammer issue is in the back of my mind. I would wan’t some pretty solid automatic checks to minimize the ammount of manual moderation!
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Just finally getting around to reading all my email, so this comment is a bit late. My website has been getting spoofed like crazy. It has caused me to be blacklisted something awful. Hopefully I am not blacklisted by Askimet… BTW, if someone is spoofing your domain will that have a drastic affect on your ranking?
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