Comment Moderation Is Now In Effect

For the first time since my blog came online in April 2005, I am having to do something that I REALLY didn't want to do, but now I have no choice. Beginning August 31, 2006, I have now implemented comment moderation. Frankly, I'm surprised it took 18 months for me to do this, but after what happened last night it was the right thing to do.

While I used to allow any and all comments to be posted at my "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog, I quickly found that certain people and "spambots" used that as an opportunity to post a FREE AD or link to their commerce web site. To me that was unethical and definitely the WRONG way to market your web site to a potential customer base. That's when I began using the "Word Verification" feature on the advice of Blogger. That has been working for about a year now, but the spam is happening again.

At first, it was just one here, one there...no big deal, right? Well, last night I got 36 comments from someone using the username "diabetes diet pre1" on every single diabetes post I have written here. ALL OF THEM! What was the message?

"Refer to Diabetes" (Don't click the link)

THE SAME MESSAGE ON ALL 36 POSTS!!!

As much as I love blogging, this aspect of it royally bites. But I'm not going to give this numbskull or any of the others just like him another FREE opportunity to post his or her little link to their ridiculous web site.

I actually went to the site to see if it had any merit and it's one of those automated web sites with a whole bunch of Google ads on them with very little content from a "real" person. You've seen 'em! Sickening!

People that know me are well aware that I'm MORE THAN HAPPY to do a link exchange with anyone who offers content related to health, diet and livin' la vida low-carb. We're all in this together trying to help educate the masses to get healthy.

But leaving comments that just say "GO TO MY WEB SITE" without making a comment about the blog post in question is irresponsible. If you post a comment on my blog, then it is your responsibility to make a point and move on. I certainly don't mind people like my friend Rob from ZERO CARB DAILY who faithfully shares his opinions about what I write about here and rightfully puts a link back to his site. That's cool.

If you have a diet or low-carb blog that you want to feature in that manner, then GO FOR IT! And if it's not listed among my Blog Friends, then just let me know in an e-mail. I am grateful to give you a plug and maybe even feature your blog in a post and certainly appreciate a link back here. We all reach different audiences of people and spreading the information around helps us all continue to grow and create a strong community of support.

Because of all of this, as of today, your comments will not be posted until they have crossed my eyeballs first. For those of you who are frequent commenters, you will probably not notice too much of a change because I will quickly approve of your posts. But for people like this "diabetes diet pre1" character who has nothing better to do than to post a bunch of links to my blog at 3am in the morning, your days of leeching off of my blog are over. Call me the Blog Nazi (a la the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld)--NO POSTS FOR YOU! LOL!

THANK YOU to everyone for your understanding about this. :)