One of the reasons I switched from Typepad to WordPress was because of the flood of spam comments and trackbacks and the paltry tools Typepad provided for combatting it. When I started my WordPress blog, I asked in the WP forum about anti-spam plugins. A member recommended SpamKarma 2. Indeed, I agree that it’s a terrific tool in the fight against spam.
But it has one drawback which especially impacted my blog. SK2 essentially disables WP’s own comment settings. Because my blog receives periodic heavy doses of abusive comments from people who take offense at various subjects I write about here, I need to use one particular WP comment setting which forces into moderation any first-time comment. Most of my unwanted commenters are first-timers and forcing all of these comments into moderation would prevent almost all abusive comments from being published.
When I expressed a wish for this at Dr. Dave’s blog (he’s the author of SK2), the intrepid Peter Westwood stepped forward and offered to help (for which I’m grateful). He’s now written the SK2 Moderate Plugin. I’d recommend that anyone who suffers from comment abuse, unwanted trolls or who wants to supplement the protection offered by SK2 should install this useful plugin. It also allows you to force all comments into moderation.
