This kind of thing would make more sense if you were running some sort of business. I'm not, so it doesn't bother me either way.

My personal choice would be to shut off the comments and instead put a link where they can email comments. If you want, you can post them later. Email spam may catch them better and if not, it's a way to be sure. I know there is a lot of problem with COMMENT spam in places like MySpace and MyLot. The whole world is waiting for a way to have at least that much control over their spaces and lots.

Askimet does a great job at catching comment spam though. And add in the right words so that stuff will get moderated at the mention of 'anal' and you're set.

My blog is for business, and I have all of the comments turned off.
Next year I will post some things looking for feed back , but for the most part it is for info. If someone wants to comment, they can call me.

there is a script for captcha for wordpress too, that should help with spam comments.

I know it's an old thread and this may seem rather dumb. But if your blog allows anonymous comments couldn't you just make comments to yourself? Or better yet have your friends and family comment as if they were actual readers? Seems like a better solution than turning off comments until you build a readership.

advice to all bloggers, deal with the spam...if you turn ur comments off then ur users wont be loyal to ur site because if you give them to speak out in ur blog, as in writing comments, then they'll come back over and over again

I do not turn off comments, I manually moderate it.
Before I will be super annoyed by the spams but after some time I just shook my head and laugh about it (while marking it as spam )
Do they actually think were that stupid to approve their comments. lolz

Mei the sad thing is a lot of those spam comments get through sometimes. Even if you're paying attention they can slip through.

But I agree about not turning off comments. If you use WordPress there are a couple of good spam blockers that catch 95% or more of the spam and the rest isn't too hard to moderate.

For now, Askimet covers my back. But, I get almost 1000 spam comments blocked by Askimet. But, I still get about 200 spam comments to moderate in one day's time. ANNOYING !! Well, I've to find some way to avoid this.

Sometimes, I click "Mark all as Spam" after doing a quick (very quick) scroll through the comments and sometimes fails to approve the good comments. I remember installing a Captcha plugin but it isn't working really well. I need to do something soon.

I'm surprised that many get through. I'm using Spam Karma 2 and barely any spam gets through. A few here and there is all. I also have the I passed math plugin installed.

I didn't have to. I use akismet for wordpress and it's OK. And I validate personally any comments so that I won't have any surprises

I would moderate them or add a plugin that removes the spam for you. You definetly would want comments on your blog as they help create a community which is what blogging is all about.

Akismet catches all of mine on one blog and nearly all on another. It takes less than 3 minutes a day to look over the Comments in moderation, click a radio button and approve or delete them.

As for should you turn them on or off, Steve Pavlina has his turned off and he seems to do alright!?

Don

My advice. Require users to register in order to leave a comment and still moderate them.

The vast majority of spam that I was getting was coming from the "ping" selection on a WP blog. Once I disabled all pings the spam stopped.

I can't read all posts so maybe you already hear about Akismet. It will help you to fight against spam. I installed it and in last 2-3 months it blocked more than 1400 spam comments.

"Do you know Math" plugin is really annoying since its got some bugs. I mean, I got a lot of complaints from my visitors. But, for some reason, I'm not getting ANY spam comments these days. I dropped from a 300 to nothing. Strange. But who cares ?! I still get the good ones.

i have turned it off, used to get huge amount of spam,

Have you been using all the anti-spam utilities your blog application has to offer?

If you are using a free blog, such as Blogger, then I would suggest turning comments off.

Have been using Akismet for my wordpress, tonnes of spam are blocked off for moderation. Though they dont appear on the blog, its still annoying!