About locked comments

[kayshapero]

Final update - I'm unsticking this message because the discussion appears to be over. 

If you dig around in my old posts for some bizarre reason, you'll note that a number have had comments locked. This is because the anonymous idiots who like to post spam to any LJ journal they find an address for have gone from single posts to strings of 5 or 6 at a time, all of which while blocked from anybody else's view I still have to go delete because they'll collect in my backups. So hereinafter, when I have to do that I'll be locking further comments unless it would block an ongoing discussion. (I probably won't lock the lot proactively - I've been ON this thing for ten years) It's got nothing to do with the legitimate content. Though I'd like to hear from anybody in here who also uses Dreamwidth if they're having the same problem. I'm seriously considering moving if this keeps up.

I'm making this post sticky so I don't have to repeat it - right now (November 2, 2012) comments are open - we'll see how long this prevails.

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UPDATE: The posts I'm talking about are all from anonymous sources, never LJ members. I already screen them. Screening does NOT delete a post, it just marks it so nobody but the user can see them. The user still has to delete them by hand to fully get rid of them. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

OK everybody - please, please PLEASE read all of this carefully FIRST before making the nth suggestion to try things I Have Already Done, or will not help with the problem as I have actually stated it. OK?

Comments

[kayshapero]

That lists
"journal default" (allows whatever you set things for in the options area which are pretty much what these sections list),
"disable" (no comments at all),
"locked" (no more comments allowed - which I'm using now if it's an old post and it gets hit),
and "don't notify" (don't tell me if there are comments).

It only affects what appears to people who read it. The posts are still there and still gum up my backups to LJarchive.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

No, it's accounts/privacy/enable comments. The options are everybody, registered users, friends or nobody. Pick either registered users or friends for the default and you will not get any anonymous comments. I don't know if it will wipe out past comments, but it will work for future comments.

[kayshapero]

OK, I'll let you know if it works.

[kayshapero]

About half an hour after I set enable comments to registered users only, a new screened anonymous comment turned up to this post. This may just mean that the updates take a long time, but it doesn't look promising.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

It may not work on past posts, of which this is one because it was posted before you changed the setting, but it should work on future ones. The past posts don't change settings when you change the default, but the future ones do. I don't know if there's a way to change the setting for past posts - I looked at it to see, and if you edit, the same options don't seem to come up. There's an allow comments button that can be used to shut them down altogether, but no reset for enable comments. Which seems weird to me - what's the difference between enabling and allowing?

Maybe we really should all collectively abandon LJ for Dreamwidth.

[kayshapero]

I'm going to continue my current habit of locking down comments in old (year or more ago) posts since I assume all legit comments have been made already, and see what happens. If this selection protects future posts it's still an improvement.

As for Dreamwidth - it's not the first time I've seen someone come up with a new LJ equivalent, and I've had at least one of 'em shot out from under me (which at least proved that my lifetime membership was a REAL lifetime membership - it lasted until the journal died) and seen a couple more vanish without participating. So I'm not dropping LJ. It'll have to get impressively worse, first - thus far the thing DOES seem to survive if despite itself on occasion.

Digging out an old icon from LJ Wars Past (the fanfic debacle).