Unmoderated Comments

I don’t think there is anything that I can’t stand more than comment spam.

Awhile back, I turned on comment moderation for all first time commenters and that allowed me to block all non-legitimate comments. Since then I have installed Akismet to block comments and it has done well, I think it blocks everything that it should.

I seem to be getting more first time commenters lately than normal, so, a few days ago, I turned off comment moderation, or so I thought. What I actually did was set it to moderate all comments and turned off my email notification and that ended up having all comments be moderated and not tell me that anything was moderated.
What a pain! Today, I went in and paid closer attention to what I was doing and as far as I know, moderation is turned off and email notification to me is turned on.

My ultimate goal is to encourage commenting, not add extra steps, just don’t spam me.

The next commenter is going to be my test, maybe it’s you, c’mon, you know you want to comment! I tend to not follow someone else’s lead, but this time, I think I’ll pull Jason’s trick – I’m willing to give away 1,000 bonus points to the first commenter on this post. How’s that for sweetening the pot. Plus I’ll randomly pick another commenter to unload 500 bonus points on. I can’t speak for anyone else, but maybe Jason will honor the points I give away, especially if you have won some from him too.
So, hurry up and leave me a comment!

UPDATE: Good job, Clif David for being the first commenter, sliding in just under a minute before Clif. 1,000 bonus points are yours + an additional 10,000 bonus points for creative coding. Redeemable here.