The Nordstream posts are still collecting comments and spam even though they’re months old
Mostly spam, truth be told, although I did delete another drive-by insult today.
Sigh.
So, I spent this morning noodling around the “Discussion” setting, and found out that I can set WordPress to shut down commenting on posts that are older than a time limit set by me.
Although I hate to do it, I’ve decided that commenting on posts here that are older than a month just generates a lot more heat than light, so I’ve disabled the comment function on posts older than 30 days.
And can anyone tell me what marking comments as “Spam” actually does in WordPress? I’m marking up to 50 comments a day as “Spam”, and other than deleting those comments, I’m not sure what else happens, because it darned sure doesn’t seem to slow down the spammers at all.
Ah, well.
Sorry about the 30-day limit, guys, but enough is enough. I knew I was going to regret those two posts.
LawDog
EDIT: Upon consultation with friends, I have increased the time limit for comments from 30 days to 90 days. I can always throttle it back if it remains a problem.
LawDog
Putting time limits on the ability to comment is a good thing to do. 95%+ after 30 days will be either drive-bys or spam.
Marking them spam ‘should’ prevent another comment from them.
Out of curiosity, have you come across any information that would change your conclusions regarding Nordstream?
Honestly that whole thing was such a major pain in my arse that I’ve consciously avoided thinking about it.
Another reason I like Substack.
You, unlike our present Maladministration, have taken ACTION towards protecting your (intellectual) borders. The slime in DC doesn’t care. Keep at it!
Ulises from the People’s Republik of Kalipornia
Personally I think the discourse you wrote feels correct – Russian safety practices are insane, as the reactor at Chernobyl demonstrated the vodka-fueled insanity some Kommisar, in a weak Soviet design. Why a gas pipeline would be any different, after a long shutdown in harsh conditions, would lead to misadventure being as likely, if not more so than sabotage.
Only thing certain is at this point, we’ll never freakin know…
The bigger pity is that after all this time, no one has created a weed-out IQ test for comments.
Say out of a 10,000 question bank, a random multiple choice question pops up. Ten seconds to get it right, or your commenting ability is locked out for 24 hours.
Gets rid of spam, trolls, and idjits overnight, forever.
A million times better than those stupid “Check all squares with…” filters.
I completely agree with your decision. I wish more platforms would do this. I just love getting a reply to a comment I made on a YouTube video 5 years ago.
WordPress does many things. Very, VERY few of them were ever intended:
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=wordpress
“There are 6675 CVE Records that match your search. “