As a fairly-frequent commenter on other people’s blogs, I know how frustrating it can be when I’ve spent a few minutes working on the perfect riposte, only to have it disappear somewhere in the void. So I thought I’d explain a little bit about how comments on johnaugust.com work, and why they sometimes don’t show up right away.
In the beginning, there was spam. It cluttered your box. Then came blogs, and soon followed [comment spam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_spam). These are short, meaningless posts that generally link to some site involving gambling or prescription drugs. In most cases, the comments are not made by actual humans, but rather by automated programs (bots), who scurry around the web looking for open comment systems.
In order to keep this site from being overrun with comment spam, there are a few safeguards built-in:
1. In order to comment, you have to type the required word from the 16-word phrase. This is sort of a home-brewed solution, but it’s worked fairly well.
2. Comments that have certain words (or combinations of words) are flagged for review. These comments are logged in the system, but won’t show up until the administrator (me) approves them.
3. The same applies to comments with three or more links in them.
4. Comments from certain spammy IP addresses are automatically flagged for review.
The three-links rule is often what trips people up.
If you’ve posted something and it hasn’t shown up, be patient. The system will automatically kick me an email when a comment gets flagged for review. Unless I’m swamped, I’ll usually get around to approving it the same day.
Thanks for posting.
[Technorati spam blogs](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/annoying-trend-watch-technorati-spam-blogs)
[New comment spam blocker](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/new-comment-spam-blocker)
[Ingenious comment spam booster](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/ingenious-comment-spam-booster)