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I never had any problem deleting spam comments that were overtly off point and total spam but as I start to see spam that is written by someone who obviously takes a few minutes to read your name LOL and toss some lines about their connecting with the topic I wanted to look at something way beyond a blog, spam, comments, page rank and anything trivial like that and look at the real scenario in most cases.
I am pretty fortunate even though to most here in America I would be considered poor or lower middle class on a good day I will eat today, I may not loose my apartment this time and I have the AC on and I obviously have electricity, I just took a nice hot shower and feel great, the turkey mayo and cheese sandwhich with as much coffee as I want helped. I can do business freely and have advantages many people around the world don’t.
One man’s spam is another man’s steak.
Now say I live in a city with millions of people and I sleep on the floor and my family is hungry and tired of eating the same crap everyday and I don’t even look for a job because there are none. A friend I know is doing well and tells me I can use the computer at the cafe which charges a lot to build links and I do that for a while then get a laptop and use the governments wifi and work all night outside in the heat so I can feed my family and we are moving to a better house and my kids have shoes and ……………
Sure no blogger wants links to malicious sites and I do check every url for any site BEFORE approving the comment.
If I think it’s going to feed someone and maybe change someone’s life why not ?
What is your comment policy ? do you have one ?
I don’t and I am not saying I approve every one but linking to some costume site or some business site that is paying someone to make some money isn’t going to kill me or this blog :)
What say you ? Thanks
Opps Back to BloggerLUV
Have an awesome weekend everyone 
I’m new to blogging so feeling my way round the blogosphere at the moment. I read posts like this and then consider what my policy will be when I get tons of traffic. Gail over at Growmap did an interesting article about this and she gets tons of spam as well as heaps of great comments. I have not had too much spam yet except when my blog went live. Tons that day but the plugin my blogging coach recommended sorted that. I now only get a bit but will probably increase as my traffic does to my blog.
I love that you check every URL before you accept a comment. I do that and one that looked okay when I clicked on the site realised it was a bad neighbourhood (for my site anyway)so deleted.
Patricia Perth Australia
I have my comment policy and it all goes around that if it looks, sounds or even smells of SPAM it outa-there
I’ve been letting spam comments like this slide. I don’t mind because if you think about it, its just like someone with a blog who is trying to monetize, so what’s the difference? If its obvious that they didn’t read anything that I said in the post, then it gets trashed.
Hey John, I usually let Askimet do most of the work. I’ll quickly scan the Askimet spam folder to see if anything looks remotely like a real comment. That being said, spam is annoying.
There’s been a ton of buzz lately for the conditional captcha plugin. I might give it a try since NoSpamNX and Bad Behavior haven’t been getting the job done lately.
Great to see you sympathize with spammers. I guess somewhere behind their spam bots, there’s someone just trying to make a buck.
Hi John,
Nice post…
But honestly I am not worried about SPAM comments.. My blog have been here on blog-o-sphere for almost one and half month, and I assure you I haven’t got any spam comments till now.. And, the amazing fact is that I don’t use plugins like ‘Akismet’.. But I do use WP-captcha free plugin
I have a comment policy after seeing one on some other sites, I will allow up to 3 keywords after name, you can’t put only keywords instead of name, and you can’t blatantly promote a product in the comment with a URL. Nice Post, Just Visited Your Site…blah is all caught by Akismet, so I don’t have to worry about it too much.
If the comment is good and the URL linking back and Keywords aren’t improper, then I generally will approve it even if the site links to a sales page or something.
I’m sure many reading this probably already know that I am one of the champions for welcoming small businesses into our blogs. Since John opened the door I want to explain briefly why I feel the way I do.
Spam originally only referred to automated comments left by bots – not comments written by humans. That said, I consider any comment whether written by a human or not that is NOT about the post it is left in to be spam.
Akismet is a major problem because many people we know who never spam have been flagged as spammers and many bloggers have a box checked that instantly deletes whatever they write in OUR blogs – and everyone else’s. There are posts about that in my blog in the Akismet category.
The only comments and links I recommend we not approve are those that are inappropriate or link to bad neighborhoods (adult content or gambling related). You can also choose to delete links to sales pages, Made for AdSense (MFA) sites or poor quality sites if you wish.
The questions to ask yourself is who does it hurt? Who does it help? Why do I care? I’m sure you’ll make the decision that is best for you.
What boggles my mind is why any blogger wants to delete comments from people that did read their post and wrote a comment related to that post.
Some bloggers believe they can read the minds of those who commented in this manner and delete what they share because “they only want links”. How could you possibly know which came first: the desire for links or finding your content?
How do you know that they were not sincerely interested in what you wrote? Maybe they were searching for that information or maybe they followed your CommentLuv link from another site or saw an interesting Tweet that brought them to your site. They read your post. THEN they decided to leave a comment that benefits their business.
Assuming that every new commentator who happens to have a business was working on link building when they found you is simply inaccurate.
But what if they WERE working on building links to their site. Let’s say they were. They read what you wrote, they took the time to try to contribute to the discussion, maybe like me they even then reviewed your post on StumbleUpon and shared it on Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.
Are you SURE you want to delete their comments? Maybe they’re in the same niche as you or have the same interests and are sincerely interested in what you have to say and sharing it with others. Their only “crime” is that they understand the value of links for their blog or business.
As John mentioned, there are now businesses that pay bloggers to leave comments. Many of you know me. Although I have not regularly done that in the past I have intermittently and I am now.
Many of you know, respect and maybe even love Kristi from Kikolani. Commenting in blogs is part of her job and few people are more giving and helpful than Kristi. When she comments in your blogs the odds are your posts might be shared across Social Networks or even end up in her Fetching Friday post. I don’t know about you but having Kristi comment in my blog posts makes my day.
Over the past few days I’ve been teaching bloggers how to find CommentLuv blogs in a particular niche and leave high quality comments for businesses. Ideally I find a blogger who loves the niche the business is in so that they enjoy what they’re reading and know what they’re writing in the comments. Some of the highest quality comments a blogger is going to get will come from these types of commentators.
There is no down-side to this. The blogger earns an honest living. The business builds links that are critical to their staying in business (and if you knew how hard that is right now…), people using search engines can find quality products and services and the blogger and their readers may find out about something they are interested in.
I dislike spam as much as anyone. Right now I have 3,557 spam comments to wade through at GrowMap plus a dozen other blogs that are getting heavily hit, but it is worth it to me to keep businesses from going under that are supporting many people.
Yes, there are people who can barely write English trying to leave comments and there are clever spammers who do us wrong (and I’ve recently outed a few of those that are the worst offenders), but that does not mean we should be slamming the door in the faces of any reader.
I have shared more specifics about this issue in the post I’ve featured in CommentLuv in this comment and in other posts I’ve written. I may even turn this comment into a post and link back to John’s. I hope you will all sincerely consider the importance of this issue.
I hope to find a way to identify which bloggers welcome businesses and which would prefer we stay away so that everyone would get what they prefer: comments or no comments from businesses.