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Ted Clayton

Finding comments closed tends to create a somewhat ‘adversarial’, vaguely ‘hostile’ atmosphere for some visitors. It’s not desirable, certainly, in & of itself.

I frequently read old Posts, even seriously old. I am reading posts 4-6 yo, routinely, and posts that have been up a decade are by not means unknown. I don’t often comment on them myself, but I do often see others who have and are currently ‘chiming in’.

Sometimes, due to context, someone comes back to ‘late’ commenters, saying; ‘Hey, the post is 2 (6) years old! It’s all done & over!’. Then you get a little round of ‘omg!’ and ‘lol!’.

WordPress’ problem with comment-spam is WordPress’ problem. They own it, really. For the WordPress world to be all hands-on-hips & glaring & huffing & puffing about spam … hey, WP bought the model, built their whole gig around an obviously spam-vulnerable scheme … so really, WordPress (and those who jump on the bandwagon & buy into WP) need to kinda suck it up & go with the fact that this is the price of the game they chose to play … and not be pushing it off onto visitors to carry the burden & pay the price.

Making the priority the Admin or staff convenience is not the best way to go … tho sometimes it has to be. If spam is too much of a hassle, that area may just need a bit more resources invested in it.

It could for sure help, to have different spam-control methods on Posts of different ages. Keep current-topics wide-open, then after a week or 2 or a month, make the commenter jump through a little bit more of a proof-hoop, and finally after a few months or so, shift the burden of proof that one is a human more-fully to the visitor. We have the templates & CSS to support that. A plugin could probably be forthcoming.

That way, you got the free-flowing action for current stuff, and more-effective spam-security for the old stuff … without slamming the door & shoving the bolt home.
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I believe there is an SEO benefit to having on-going commenting … and that optimally, the clever Admin will even find ways to actively encourage continuing input on posts. You realize, eh … this is substantially the explanation for the fact that I am reading *old posts* … and seeing comments still being made on them. The Engine is showing me the ‘active’ stuff, ahead of the shut-down archives. Hmm? :)






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