Monday, January 18, 2010

Comments and visitors

Comments: I've always encouraged comments from readers of my blog. Unfortunately the "blog spammers" eventually found me and I had to turn on "comment moderation" some years ago. That added a bit of delay - comments don't show up until I approve them. Annoying, but no big deal.

Well, the spammers are attacking me again, this time with comments that almost look human-created, but upon a second look are so generic that they're useless. It's become a daily occurrence. So now I'm trying another method: "word verification". If you add a comment, you will have to read a word graphic and enter the word. An annoying step, I know, but I'm sure you've see it in use on other systems. On the plus side, I'll turn off comment moderation, so your comment will show up immediately.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Please keep the comments coming! If there's an aspect of soaring that I haven't written about yet, feel free to send me topic suggestions.

Visitors: In case you're curious:
  • About 175 to 240 individuals visit my blog in a typical month.
  • Over the last year, over 1,900 individuals visited at least once.
  • Usually the day after I post an article, about 20 people visit, and then fewer each day in between posts.
  • The average visitor reads 1.4 pages, which means most visitors only read one page, the most recent post.
  • The most popular posts for returning visitors have been Weather and planning for soaring and Class on PDA, SeeYou Mobile, and Volkslogger.
Thank you all for your interest!

1 comment:

Julien said...

No worries with the extra hurdles for the comments, I think all blogs are getting spammed in large amounts those days. You're right, spammers are getting more crafty...

I can't remember if you ever talked about this, but what about GA pilots moving to gliders? How much un-learning is there to do? What's the typical pitfalls? Does the GA baggage help or hinder the learning process?

Keep those posts coming, and I hope the transition to the new home base is not too painful.