Blogger Magic - Comment Moderation Settings

If you publish a blog, and want your readers to comment, you need to decide whether to moderate comments.

Comment moderation, applied properly, help you to keep abusive and spam comments off your blog. If you want to publish a blog, and have real people commenting, you need to keep spam comments off the blog. People won't comment, if they have to compete with spam.

If you want to publish a blog, and allow Blogger Hosted comments, you really should moderate. If you don't moderate, prepare to remove spam comments after they are published. Remember that Google+ Hosted comments are moderated by the community.

You setup moderation, for Blogger Hosted comments, from the dashboard Settings - "Posts, comments and sharing" page.

Under "Comments", you have "Comment Moderation", with 3 settings.

• Always.
• Sometimes.
• Never.

Moderation settings are in the Settings - Posts, comments and sharing page.



Moderate Always.

Every comment, published by somebody who is not an administrator or author, will be moderated.

With "Always" or "Sometimes" selected, moderated comments will be sent to each email address listed in "Email moderation requests to".

Select "Always", "Sometimes", or "Never".



You - or whoever is addressed under "Email moderation requests to" - will have the ability to moderate from the email message received. You, or any blog administrator, can moderate from the dashboard Comments - "Awaiting moderation" page.

Moderate Sometimes.

You can selectively moderate comments for older posts, with newer posts not subject to moderation.

If you select "Sometimes", you provide a moderation threshold.

Here, we are set to moderate all posts older than 14 days.



Every post subject to moderation will receive the treatment, selected for "Always". Every newer post, not subject to moderation, will permit any comment to be published immediately.

Moderate Never.

Any comment, submitted to be published, will publish immediately.

Dashboard moderation offers three options.

With every comment listed in the dashboard Comments - "Awaiting moderation" page, you have 3 options.

• Publish.
• Delete.
• Spam.

Once one of these options is chosen, for any comment being moderated, you'll have similar - but not symmetrical - options.

EMail moderation offers similar options.

With each comment moderated by email, you'll have 3 similar options.

• Publish.
• Delete.
• Mark as spam.

Select "Publish", "Delete", or "Mark as spam".



Besides moderation, you can select CAPTCHA verification.

Besides moderation, you can reduce spam, using CAPTCHA verification. If selected, all non administrators and authors will be subject to CAPTCHA verification.

If not selected, anybody commenting anonymously - and not signed in with a Google account - will still be subject to CAPTCHA verification. The "Show word verification" setting applies to comments posted with the publisher properly authenticated.

Right now, the CAPTCHA used is a word puzzle - and has received mixed reviews.

The bottom line.

As a blog owner, you should choose a comment moderation policy - if you allow Blogger Hosted comments.

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If you allow #Blogger Hosted comments on your blog, you need to choose a moderation policy. Moderation is essential, to reduce spam, and encourage comments by actual blog readers.

Confusion From Comments And The CAPTCHA

This week, we're seeing complaints from quite a few angry blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

Why do I have to solve a CAPTCHA, to comment on my own blog?

and

Everybody sees a CAPTCHA - even if they are logged in to Blogger!

Previously, the CAPTCHA was visible only to those not logged in to Blogger, or to those wishing to comment, anonymously.

It appears that the full page and popup window comment forms were updated, possibly to make the CAPTCHA form more usable, for those blog readers who are using a computer subject to filtering of "third party" cookies.

The CAPTCHA appears to be always required.

The effect that we are now seeing is that the CAPTCHA appears to be required, for all comments, when the full page and popup window forms are used.

In some cases, even with the CAPTCHA displayed, you can publish without solving.

• If you are authenticated, the reCAPTCHA, though displayed, may not require solution.
• If you are authenticated, and a blog member, neither the ezCAPTCHA nor the reCAPTCHA should require solution.

In either case, simply compose and Publish your comment.

People who wish to publish anonymously will always have to solve a CAPTCHA.

Unfortunately, people who are publishing anonymously will still need to solve the CAPTCHA. The non optional reCAPTCHA, which gets displayed, is not as easy to solve as the optional ezCAPTCHA.

Cookie filtering, once again, may be part of the problem.

To increase the confusion, people using a computer where "third party" cookies are filtered will be treated as if they are publishing anonymously, and will have to solve the reCAPTCHA. Some people, who think that they are properly authenticated, will find out otherwise, if they try to publish a comment without solving the CAPTCHA.

Continuing to cause confusion, in some cases, comments entered may simply vanish, if the CAPTCHA can't be displayed when necessary. This, is another consequence of cookie filtering.

Blogger Commenting, And Social Networking Relationships

Every week, we see the anguish

How do I get user xxxxx blocked from commenting on my blog?

because many people enjoy FaceBook and Twitter, where there is no spam, and no unwanted comments. They think that Blogger comments should be controlled, as social networking like FaceBook and Twitter are controlled.

With FaceBook, each person controls their own Wall, and their own neighbourhood. With Twitter, each person decides exactly who they wish to Follow, and sees tweets from only those folks that they follow. Neither FaceBook or Twitter encourages you to open up your neighbourhood to the world; both allow you to establish each contact, one by one, at your discretion.

With Blogger commenting, you are encouraged to allow anybody - or anybody with a required level of authentication - to comment on your blog. This encourages freedom of speech, and extends your neighbourhood far beyond the walls that you setup with FaceBook and Twitter. Some commenters, and other readers of your blogs, may later become part of your FaceBook and Twitter neighbourhoods - but at their discretion, as well as yours.

With both FaceBook and Twitter, any established account has some implied value, which is a function of the size of its neighbourhood. Nobody can use a FaceBook or Twitter account for persistent spam, because people control their own neighbourhoods. If offended, they can easily discontinue a FaceBook or Twitter contact. There is no real anonymity in either FaceBook or Twitter - each contact there is identified and validated, by its neighbourhood of contacts.

With Blogger, anybody can setup one or more Blogger accounts, for posting comments on any blog that permits comments. A Blogger account has no value, equivalent to a FaceBook or Twitter account. A Blogger account won't be identified, or validated, by its neighbourhood of contacts.

The owner of any blog has a few options, as to what level of anonymity may post comments.

Who Can Comment?

• Anyone - includes Anonymous Users
• Registered Users - includes OpenID
• Users with Google Accounts
• Only members of this blog
• (For private blogs) Only members and readers of the blog.

Beyond those 5 choices, there is only the Blogger heuristic comment filter, which has to be persistently trained, by each blog owner. You, as the blog owner, moderate either actively or passively. You allow / disallow / tag as "spam" before publishing comments, or you delete / don't delete / tag as "spam" after comments are published. That's the choices that you have, as a blog owner.

You cannot negatively filter comments, by blocking specific individuals. If you were to add a filter for one individual, the owner of the filtered Blogger account could setup another account, and pester you from that account, with impunity. They could even use multiple different accounts, using botted computers, if they wished.

When you publish a Blogger blog and allow commenting on your Blogger blog, you open yourself to the world. For good, or for bad.

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Loss Of Comments After Publishing Blog To A New URL

Recently, we've started to see a number of reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken of comments being lost after a blog is newly published to a Google Custom Domain - or in some cases, to a different Blog*Spot URL. Like many problems involving comments, custom domain problems, and / or URL changes in general, this problem warrants further investigation.

To start with, there are a few questions which are relevant, which may help us diagnose where the problem originates.

• Blogger Support suggests two useful details.
  1. The exact URL of a post on your old blog which has comments.
  2. The exact URL of a post on your new blog which is missing comments.
• Where are the comments being lost - can you find them still inventoried in "Edit Posts", for instance?
• Were the comments moderated, or unmoderated?
• When were the comments posted (by the blog readers)? When were they approved (if moderated) by you?
• Is the blog owned (and moderated) by you only, or is it a team effort?
• From how many different browsers and / or computers have you observed the comments lost?
  • Your computer / your readers computers?
  • Any affinity as to browser or computer operating system?
  • Does your blog have any cultural, geographical, or linguistic relevance?
  • Do you observe this problem with just this one blog, or with other blogs too?
• What type of comment display does your blog use - Embedded, Popup Window, or Separate Page?
• Did you buy the domain through Blogger ("Buy A Domain"), or directly from a registrar? If directly from a registrar, did you use a righteous DNS setup?
• When you observe the lost comments, is the blog "In Transition", or does this happen after Transition ends? Or is this a simple blog rename, to another BlogSpot URL?

This is just a beginning effort, to diagnose the problem. Help us out here, and maybe help yourself.

• Answer the above questions, either in your forum question, or as a comment below.
• Subscribe to the comments feed for this post.
• Check this post occasionally for more questions, and answer more questions when asked.

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(Update 2010/05/20): In a private note from Blogger Support, we are told

Comments should usually sync within 24 hours of the time when you changed your URL, most of the time much sooner.

(Update 2010/05/06): We have an update from Blogger Support.

We released a fix on May 1st which should prevent pretty much any 'my comments havent synced after a few days' issues.' So for any person reporting the change after May 1st, it should be a matter of hours. If we see cases where its longer, please let me know!

Note if you change the blog back to the previous URL, you'll just make things worse. That puts the comments through two URL changes. If you change the URL yet again, when you find out that changing the URL back didn't accomplish anything, you're going to have to wait still longer.

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Help us to help you, and provide details. Please.

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Keep Malicious Content Out Of Your Blog

Every day or so, we see reported from concerned bloggers, about unknown content in their blogs.

Where did those ads come from? I didn't add them!

or

How do I keep this other blogger from posting porn links in my blog?

As we add content to our blogs, and make them fun, interesting, and shiny, to attract readers, we risk adding undesirable content. This is a constant problem.

The bad guys are out there - and the more fun, interesting, and shiny your blog is, the more it's likely to have readership, reputation, and value.

The more readership, reputation, and value that your blog has, the more attractive it is to the bad guys. And the bad guys have various ways to attack a given blog.

• Malicious Comments
• Malicious Posts
• Malicious Accessories
• Malicious Blog Members
• BlogList / Feed Gadgets

Malicious Comments

One of the easiest way to add third party content to your blog is from allowing comments.

Comments are contributed by people who, at best, you simply do not know. Any content from someone who you do not know can always be malicious, or obnoxious in some way.

Some blog owners will try to identify and block individual commentors. I will continue to insist that anybody who you should fear will not be bothered greatly by anything that you can do here.

You absolutely must moderate comments, or risk having a blog known for hosting malicious links - or worse.

Malicious Posts

Besides comments, posts are a constant concern. If you have a team blog, you have to be able to trust the other members in the blog.

Post moderation, using post editor to publish, isn't an option. Anybody who you make an author can publish what they feel like publishing. You can only moderate posts after they are published, when using post editor.

An alternative to using post editor to publish is Mail-to-Blogger, where contributions are emailed to the blog. If Mail-to-Blogger is setup to publish straight to the blog, and the bad guys figure out your MTB account and password, you'll have malicious content a plenty.

You can moderate before publishing, using Mail-to-Blogger.

Malicious Accessories

Any time that you install third party accessories of any type, you are placing your blog at risk.

Don't be overly paranoid - you have to make your blog interesting to your readers. But do keep the risks in mind.

This is similar to layered security for your computer, which is a related concern here.

Malicious Blog Members

Sometimes, possibly having unwisely installed a third party accessory, the install process may have enabled the addition of an unknown member to the blog. The unwanted content may be added by the attacker, using this unknown blog member.

If none of the above advice offers you an explanation for the existence of unwanted content, check your blog member list.

BlogList / Feed Gadgets

Occasionally, we may Follow a blog where the owner will later decide to try to get more traffic to the blog, and will redirect the blog feed to a cloud of random blogs. If you are Following such a blog, or have such a blog in your BlogList or Feed gadget, you'll see your BlogList or Feed gadget show odd content - and frequent spam.

Mail-to-Blogger Can Provide Moderated Posting

Occasionally, someone asks

How can I require approval of any post before it's published?

and my typical answer will be

You can't, using the post editor. Any author can publish a post, and you can only moderate posts after the fact.

The key words there are "post editor".

If you enable Mail-to-Blogger in Settings - Mobile and email, you can have your authors email their posts, unpublished, to you.

You use the Mail-to-Blogger setting, and you publish posts when you approve.

If you set Mail-to-Blogger to save emails as draft posts, all posts emailed will be saved for you to moderate.

In the dashboard Settings - Email page, set "Posting using email" to "Save emails as draft post".

You, or any administrator, can examine draft posts from the Edit Posts menu - and publish only the ones that meet your approval.

Combine GMail and Mail-to-Blogger lets you automate your tasks.

If you use a GMail account to filter and forward to MTB, you can selectively route posts from specific individuals for moderating, and others can post directly.

This allows you to use your time more effectively, only moderate possible problem authors, moderate more effectively, and respond more promptly. If you can respond more promptly, you can selectively moderate based upon need, not just current workload.

Maintain some students as trusted - and keep a close watch on the others.

You can change individual author moderation policy on a moments notice.

Setup 2 Blogger accounts for your blog, each with a different MTB policy (Account A to post after moderation, Account B to post without moderation). Have your authors email their posts to a special GMail account.

Setup the GMail account with a series of email filters, with each author email forwarding to the appropriate Blogger account MTB email address.

Any individual author can be selectively changed between moderation and no moderation, by simply changing the email filter to redirect to Account A or Account B, respectively. You spend your time moderating only authors posting through Account A.

You can publish the posts under the student names, using multiple Blogger accounts.

If you want to publish the posts under the individual author names and profiles, setup individual Blogger accounts, as blog authors - one for each author - and only give the authors the Mail-to-Blogger email addresses. Then, as above, setup each Blogger account to save emails as draft posts.

Since you will be the actual owner of each Blogger account, setup the accounts with secure names and passwords - and keep track of the account names and passwords. Then, moderate the ones who need your attention.

Just observe that posts composed and submitted, using email, won't be as complete and well formatted, as posts composed in post editor. You may have to add content and formatting, before publishing.

Mail-to-Blogger Can Provide Anonymous Ability To Post

In the forums, we see periodically the query

How do I let everyone in my company post to my blog, without requiring them to register?

and my answer is typically

You can let them post comments, but to post actual articles, they will have to register.

And as we have learned, there is a limit in the number of registrations - each blog can have up to 100 members - administrators, authors, and readers - and no more. Apparently, up to 100 people can post to any blog, and no more.

That's not completely true. To use the Blogger Post Editor, through your browser, to post articles, you have to be a registered blog member. But, if you setup a Mail-to-Blogger account, and give out the Mail-to-Blogger email address, anyone knowing the address can post using their email program. Although here, you can moderate any posts, before publishing, should you feel the need.

This solution will have 2 caveats.

1. You are now opening the blog to anyone who knows the email address. Don't use an easy to guess private address component. And, establish a back door, for distribution of an updated private address component, when you do this. Plan to change the address periodically, and upon quick notice.
2. This will require that everybody posting use email. They won't be using the post editor. The people using this will have to check their email Inboxes after posting, and look for "undeliverable" notices caused by unexpected changes in the address (caveat #1).

Maybe this procedure will be more useful if you request your anonymous readers post a comment to a specified blog post, you moderate comments, and you can post their articles under your name.

This is not an excellent solution, but until Blogger extends the 100 members limit, maybe it's better than nothing.

Just note that posts composed and submitted, using email, won't be as complete and well formatted, as posts composed in post editor. You may have to add content and formatting, when publishing.