My comment I before I read some of the comments was that on my blog that I started in October, I have received nearly 1,500 spam comments. I think it is absurd.

As an aside, Jeffrey, you may want to look at the tabindex ordering of first part of the comment form, it jumps a bit…

I don’t double check near as much as I do with email looking for false positives. I think I finally registered for a WordPress.com account so I could use Akismet, but I seem to stick with Spam Karma.

Plugin comments are popular, I had so many (OpenID, Gravatars, Subscribe To Comments) that I had some cross mojonation so I got rid of a bunch of them. Has Gravatars 2.0 been launched yet? I looked in to some alternates to it, such as MyBlogLog but I don’t think these little pictures are worth the headache… OpenID would be nice but it never seemed to work correctly…

I come from an Eastern European country which has experienced war at the end of the 20th century. I know what it feels like to run into the basement because of aerial bombardments and what it means to wait for bread under sniper fire. Maybe that’s the reason why I find your posts about hearing police sirens in NYC frightening while your dog is sleeping annoying.

Yet, I bought the first edition of your Web standards book (at a very high price, where I live in) and implemented it in my work. It has paid off, and sometimes, it was a stumbling stone because of managers and marketing (I can bet that the same line of thinking you’re being confronted with even today). I love standards. I love the Web.

Yet, as much as you brag about women being NOT included into Web design business, you NEVER EVER got out of the US frame. There was not a single post about problems web developers and designers are facing in the world outside the US. Everything is so much about content, solidarity and genuine content, yet all of that never gets out of US state borders.

It is a closed world. And I will be completely honest with you: I resent that. I follow your “web-standards evangelism”, yet I am excluded from it, like millions out there are, who don’t happen to own an US passport.

I don’t own a credit card, yet I WILL buy the expensive english-bookstore second edition of your book, although I downloaded a pirated version of it. Because I believe in everything that you have put in the making of this book.

Your bragging about how it is the right thing to publish original content, not being the next Web 2.0 thing is comparable to me bragging about how there are not ANY persons whatsoever on your blog, flickr list etc. that are not outside the US. Sorry Jeff, I respect you VERY much, but I did NOT see any event apart in Europe recently. Picture this: “to gain a deeper understanding of web standards and emerging best practices. Be inspired by fresh ideas and new directions. Join the greatest minds and hottest talents in web design today.”

Well, according to you, an Event Apart REALLY IS an Event Apart. It boils down to Web standards people who happen to have US citizenship. And the show goes around the US. Well if the Web is supposed to be accessible to everyone (as you tell in your book AND as I tell people around me, believing in a TRULY universal Web), it should include everyone. But it does NOT. Like EVERY Web 2.0 service against which you wrote, against every proprietary browser-rendering technology you wrote, the Web should be accessioble to everyone. Yet every single thing that you write about includes the topics that revolve EXCLUSIVELY around US firms, US Web authors, US conferences and so on.

My point is: Why bother to talk about universality of the Web and promote Web standards if it is just a US thing? You can brag all you want about examples from here and there but the fact is that you are completely unaware of what is happening outside this “so heroic” US web-standards arena.

I am sad. I am disappointed. Yet, I will buy your and a load of other books to learn from. And I won’t just download and print the pirated versions, although the prices for them here are inhuman, although I am excluded from the possiblity of paying with a credit card, although the discussion about these crucial Web subjects is going on, I won’t participate, because no one cares. All the references are geared toward the exclusively US “event apart” events etc.

A 32 KB DSL connection is a problem??!? How about being on a standard modem connection and pushing Web standards in spite of being rejected by a lot of firms who pay well, here, in the non-US?

Dear mr. Zeldman, I respect you, and I thank you for sharing the knowledge, but my disappointment has surpassed my enthusiasm. Pushing out Web standards in a poor, counter-personnel mined country while paying outrageous sums to learn about standards, in spite of being able to download pirated versions (at slower and FAR more costly speeds than your oh-so-poor-me post brags about), but sticking to morale sucks royally.

I will buy your 2nd edition book. But. I will never EVER read your blog again. Or look up if there are some new books by you. I am so bitter. Please don’t write about your fears in NYC while hearing sirens anymore. There are a lot of us who take for granted much more worse than that, and we don’t even brag about DSL connections and such. I would give my right arm to have a connection like yours, so much clients unaware about Web standards etc etc.

Be decent, at least. PLEASE. There in fact IS a world outside your US sphere. Yes, really, there is.

And no, I do NOT hate you, your country or anything for that matter. I just wish to point out that you are no better than people about whom you think that they care about money only and not web standards, quality content etc. You don’t care about any of that outside your narrow life circle anyway.

Sirens, NYC, oh, cruel world.

Flattened houses, minefields, web standards, oh cruel world.

Farewell, Mr. Zeldman.

Have you tried comment preview and submit AFTER preview and not without it? (of course previewed text must be the same as the submitted one).. It worked very very nice for all my friends around Czech IT blogosphere..

Receiving no comments (with “comments on”) was like having a cell phone with no one to call.

I got rid of my phone in January.

I use Bad Behavior in conjunction with Askimet. Without them, I’m sure the situation would be much worse.

No doubt :-/

You might want to try a plugin by Mike Jolley aptly named the Comment Spam Stopper. I haven’t tried it myself, but it’s based on some of the tech I use in my contact form plugin so I know it’s a solid solution.

I also like the “honeypot” method mentioned by Josh Clark, above, where an input is hidden (by positioning, not input type), and if populated returns an error. You just need to be sure to provide a descriptive label so users who do “see” it understand it’s not to be populated. That’s one I use on my contact form as well (turn off styles to see the label and input).