I’m seeing this plugin in LOTS of blogs that I’m reading and commenting to and I wasn’t really that much concerned about it, initially. However when I started commenting again on lots of blogs as part of my back to blogging tasks, I started getting annoyed with this plugin. Why is that so?
Confirm you are not a spammer
What I’m talking about is this plugin called Anti-Spambot created by GrowMap and Andy w/c are people that I know and respect a lot. The way this plugin works is that there’s a checkbox in a comment form and before you can submit your comment, you will need to tick the checkbox to indeed confirm that you are not a spammer. How much sense does that make?
Well its not really that much of a big deal for me actually. I just find that its a workflow killer. I mean, you’re typing comments and doing this and that and when you click submit, you will get this notice that you have to confirm. Not that its annoying but it just gives me the ‘wtf’ look on my face. It doesn’t reload the page either so your comment will still be there but I guess its just human nature to get the ‘what’ look when you submit something and it doesn’t get submitted immediately. lols.
The other side
I haven’t tried the plugin yet so I haven’t had a chance to see what’s behind it yet. However from a bloggers perspective, I can’t really see much the value of it. I mean, what makes it different from a captcha? It requires you to do a thing before submitting your comment. Is it not making it hard for your reader to do commenting? Or maybe its just being lazy to moderate comments all in all?
If you’re reading this blog for a while you know that I value comments a lot and that I make it easy for people to interact (I always ask for their take, whatnot). With that I’m thinking having this ‘confirm you’re not a spammer’ box will only give your readers a step more before they can do what they want to do. And that maybe there’s a conversion part there that gets unconverted instead.
But again that’s just my opinion. Or maybe is there something that I misunderstood with regards to the plugin? Is Akismet not enough?
Hey Melvin, I just wanted to give you a heads up. The tweetmeme button you are using on your articles at the top left is not sharing your twitter username with the tweet. You’re going to miss out on who is sharing your content unless you modify that.
Melvin, the plugin you are talking about loads via a javascript hence making it a greater challenge for bots. It is simpler than a captcha which is why it is much more popular. People often get captcha’s wrong and need to retry. Checking a box is one step that most are willing to take. I fail to see your issue with this plugin, it makes a lot more sense than other methods.
Hi Melvin, from what I’ve seen it works amazing and has 100% stooped all the spam on my blogs. the one issue I’ve seen is if a blog doesn’t support Java pop ups it will actually load a page that says you forgot to check the ox ad at that point your comment is lost. Besides that it’s been a great addition to my blog.
I can not agree more with Brian.
I have honestly never heard anyone say “what is the point” to that plugin. The point is that it stops hundreds of bot spam comments so I don’t have to spend hours going through them and deleting them.
I have had it on my blog for 9 months now and that is about how long have I been checking the box on other blogs when commenting and I have never forgot to check the box.
I think it can’t even be compared to CAPTCHA because you are clicking on “submit comment” button anyway, so you have the mouse in your hand and it is as easy as it gets. CAPTCHA usually makes me either do the maths or try to decipher weird words.
I have no connection to the plugin or the developers so I have no reason to support it so hard, but I think you should read up on this one and see how it changed blogging for better.
I personally think the ‘Confirm you are not a spammer’ should be changed into something more suitable for the eyes of the professional blogger and the commentator.
This is, all in all, a great plugin though. =]
What’s the use? It’s gotten rid of 99% of my spam!
Well, at first I didn’t believe this plugin is that damn good, but it was introduce at Basic Blog Tips, so I try it and it stop all spam to almost zero and the best part is it make one more step for people to comment.
Why I like to make difficulty for people to comment? Well, the reason is simple, because those that took the step to tick that small box, are actually and more likely to leave a comment that make sense to me rather then a comment that doesn’t give a shit.
If you really look at yourself at ticking the box, don’t you feel that the comment you wrote on that blog post is meant for the author to read, strange but true that when you don’t give a shot to comment, usually when the pop up came up telling you to tick the box, you will feel “ah… forget it” kind of mindset.
I’m surprise it works. Any spammer with half a brain can easily bypass Javascript. Just saying.
Yea but Rhys spammers dont have half a brain so its not that easy for them
I think the plugin will prevent a lot of people from leaving comments, and Akismet is enough, since you can’t get comments without any spam. 🙂
If you have askimet then I don’t see the point. I think it might be an alternative for those that are anti-askimet or use other anit-spam plugins. Some people like askimet and other are against it like the growmap site. I have come across a few other anti-spam plugins that seem better than grow map check this box thing for that matter. I need to test them one day, but haven’t had a chance to do so yet. The one I am looking into as an alternative to askimet is WP-AntiSpam, but so far I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with it.
Oh thanks Daniel. I thought I already fixed that. 🙁 Anyway, I am planning to remove it since its not counting the retweets accurately. I guess I’ll just have to rely on Twitter’s widget itself.
But thanks man!
@brian @brankica, noted! 🙂
I personally think the ‘Confirm you are not a spammer’ should be changed into something more suitable for the eyes of the professional blogger and the commentator.
This is, all in all, a great plugin though. =]
This plugin has its own pros and cons for a webmaster prospective it significantly decreases the comments, where as a user might end up some frustration when he is see the pop up and at times chances are high that a no vice user might mark up your blog as a spam one..
I guess it depends. On a quick look, it seems offending but I don’t think thats a big deal either. Personally that part of text is just fine to me.
Right. I get your point and I think thats a pretty good point. Hmmm, I will definitely give that plugin a good try.
Thanks Wong!
Thats one of my points in the article but reading some of the comments, I think I would give the plugin a try.
Doesn’t harm that much to try eh?
I like this plugin. I personally believe it’s much less frustrating then captcha. Especially Recaptcha gives often hard to read pictures.
This plugin is really useful! I barley get any spam now days and some great comments so we can discuss on the topic I write.
I just encountered this plugin on another site, which immediately caused me to Google it, which in turn lead me here, which at the very least means you got one more visitor to your blog!
I did find it irritating, but now that I’ve read the comments above, I’ve decided it actually seems like a good plugin. I wonder if it works on bbpress? That forum seems incredibly vulnerable to spam.
Well this plugin is better than captcha since users don’t need to guess the word, type it, get it wrong and have to redo it again. Whats is this commentluv about?
http://ayumilove.net
Guess what, I ended up here while searching for the download link of the plugin. And after reading your article I’m confused about the idea… 😀
I have heard this is awesome and when I get my own domain I will use it with wordpress. For now I have comments disabled without registration.
Being one who gets a lot of spam comments, I have been looking for this plugin and am happy I finally figured out what it is called. I have no problem clicking the box, I prefer that over that dang Captcha.
Thanks for your post!
Blessings,
Victoria
As a receiver of a lot of spam, I think things like this works wonders. I would literally get 10-20 comments per day that were all spam and it was frustrating to have to deal with it.
I feel now Akismet sometimes may be rarely fails to filter spam and in those cases this kind of Confirm not a spammer checkbox surely helps the webmaster to get rid of spam comments.
Melvin, like you, it gave me ‘WTF’ impression at first when I tried to comment to one of the blogs I follow. But I ended up installing it on my blog sooner, as I read that it’s a good plugin. It totally reduce 99% of spams on my blog. It originally has 100+ spam every day before having use of the Captcha Plugin. But this one, I loved it. Simply because, it is Simple.
Well I don’t think it can combat spam by bots.Its just a checkbox, any bot can be coded to do that.But yeah it does helps blocking certain amount of spam comments.
Yes! when we are going to comment on any blog article then every time its asking to make sure I’m not spammer and need to click on that require field. Personally I think it will not be much helpful for manually blog spammer 🙂
Some Bloggers are bombarded with tons of spam comments than one can imagine. every plugin which offers a relief bloggers will use it. the solution is not to ping your posts this alerts scrapebox the software spammers use. instead let your posts be found through links and promotion.