Tricky Problem
Comment spam is an ongoing problem for most bloggers. I've had my struggles with it over the years, but I've largely got it under control.
My biggest kind of comment spam these days comes in asian characters that I don't understand. I don't want to be a jerk and delete all comments in a language that I don't understand, but I also have a strong suspicion that this is spam.
I have found that 90%+ of all comment spam is on posts that are 90 days or older. These old posts have serious google juice and are great honeypots of traffic (and spam). So when I see stuff like this on old posts in a language I don't understand, I generally delete it.
It's a tricky problem for sure.
I automatically close comments on older posts. I don't remember exactly what criteria I have set up - maybe after 20 days with no comments or something along those lines. That, plus a simple text captcha has essentially eliminated comment spam for me.
Posted by: COD | May 25, 2007 at 09:06 AM
I just started switching off comments on all posts older than 60 days.
1500 spams a day to less than 100.
Wrote a post about it:
http://internetducttape.com/2007/05/22/using-comment-spam-to-measure-blog-rank/
Posted by: engtech | May 25, 2007 at 02:36 PM
Fred - check out justhumans.com/
a nice way to kill posting spam
Posted by: Alex von der Goltz | May 25, 2007 at 03:03 PM
Vaguely off-topic, but check out reCaptcha. Doesn't solve comment spam, but if you ever put up a captcha...
Posted by: Michael Chui | May 25, 2007 at 03:47 PM
Deleting comments with Asian characters is all right. Because if they can read your posts in English, surely they can comment in the same language!
Posted by: Artorios | May 25, 2007 at 08:50 PM
Yes, these Chinese comments are indeed SPAM. And even if they weren't, it would be the commenter being a jerk for posting in a language that the host can't read, not the host.
Posted by: Dawn | May 28, 2007 at 10:59 AM