This is really great advice, Moderate or Verify not both, I say Moderate every time!

Copied from blogmamasusan because I hate word verification, and even worse when people use both that and moderation when they don't need it!

Spammers can still post with verification, but you have the great satisfaction of ZAPPING them into spam if you moderate and that teaches blogger to recognise the spam in future and do it for you! You can always check your spam folder and take out any that shouldn't be there too.

Everything below here is copied from Susan's blog. Please share it with everyone, tweet, facebook, blogger.....

Commenting: Verification or Moderation, but not both!

COMMENTS

We all want them but we want good comments, not spam or obscenities or links to porn sites. Blogger has two good ways of helping us make sure the bad stuff doesn't get through.

Comment Moderation

You get to this option by clicking Layout, then Settings, then Posts and Comments.

Comment Moderation has 3 options:

Always - the blog owner must approve every comment before it appears.
Sometimes - the owner moderates comments after a period of time.
Never - anything goes.

This option is a personal preference. Personally, I don't moderate this blog or my inspirational site, SusanStilwell.com (a Wordpress site).

Word Verification

This option is found under Comment Moderation, and has 2 options:

No - the comment immediately posts.

Yes - the commenter is prompted to type in garbled text. As of this writing, there is a second field that's a blurred photograph of numbers.

In theory, this is a good idea. It keeps automated commenting programs from leaving unwanted messages. 

In reality, it's a pain in the neck. Some of the text strings are indecipherable and I've had photographs that were completely black with no images. Plus, I'vepurposely entered wrong data and the comment posted anyway!

Word verification will also keep visually impaired people from leaving comments. As hard as it is for us to see, it's impossible for a visually impaired person to hear because their software thinks the garbled text is a word. Very frustrating!

Moderate or verify, but NOT both! 

(Tweet & spread the word!)

It's like wearing suspenders with a belt! Plus, it's annoying. Make your reader's experience on your blog as pleasant and simple as possible. You might even try taking everything off and running naked for a while!

But only on your blog. Don't get crazy...

Happy blogging!

Susan