Tue Jan 28 2020

...

How to Prevent Spam in Your Comments

There's no way to completely eliminate spam. But FastComments implements several measures to help.

Site Admin Documentation

A default installation of FastComments has both Spam and Profanity filtering activated.

These default settings strike a balance between preventing spam and not being overly intrusive for most communities.

You might want to check out the moderation guide.

How it Works

Our spam filter uses a Naive Bayes classifier to identify spam.

It is trained over time based on what admins designate as spam and not spam.

FastComments operates in an iframe on your site. This makes it more difficult for automated spam bots to target your comment section. However, if they do and our classifier determines that their comments are "spammy," they will be hidden from your users. Like all other comments, they are also marked as "needs review" in the moderation page of the dashboard.

Profanity filtering, however, does not result in hidden comments by default. It will simply mask the "bad words" with asterisks.

Blocking Spam Completely

By default, FastComments will allow the spam, but hide it and mark it for review.

If you'd like to inform the user that their comment was detected as spam and ask them to revise it, this can be done in Moderation Settings by enabling the Block Spam setting.

Hiding Profane Comments

Profane comments can be hidden by enabling Automatically Send Profane Comments to Spam in Moderation Settings.

Settings

Both Profanity and Spam filtering can be individually toggled off in the Moderation Settings page.

Comment Verification

FastComments employs a verification system where, by default, unverified comments are marked as such for all users to see.

By allowing users to comment without being fully logged in, this lowers the barrier to entry for joining a discussion. The unverified label can be hidden via customization rules.

Unverified comments are displayed by default, but they can be hidden until verified via email, by enabling Only Auto Approve Verified Comments.

Note that with SSO, all comments are always verified. If a user is logged into a verified session, their comments will also always be verified.

Unverified comments can also be scheduled for removal.

For Commenters

If your comment is detected as spam, you will see a message immediately. This is to inform you that the comment will have to be reviewed before it is visible to others. Spam detection can't be 100% accurate, so we understand if you experience some frustration. If your comment is legitimate, the site admin should be able to recognize that and mark your comment as not spam.