I can’t believe that I didn’t think of this before. I finally figured out how to deal with the comments that seem kind of relevant but have sketchy links in in the URL field. I had several of them in the last few days, where the text of the comment matched the post but the link was to some betting site. So, from here on when the link seems fishy I’ll just edit it out and approve the comment. Duh.
Grey Spam Solution
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Seems like spam is getting smarter. I’m not sure how they manage to make comments relevant to the posts but it seems that if a comment includes obvious sketchy links then that post is spam, that’s why the link is there. In my opinion the comment should be left intact with the link or deleted completely as spam. After all if it has an obvious sketchy link then it seems reasonable enough to assume it’s spam, so to delete the link and still approve the comment could be viewed as not only censoring but also boosting up the number of ones comments. I think you should delete them, but then it’s not my site!
Tom, the problem comes with how incredibly borderline these things are. It’s downright difficult to tell. For example there is this comment which had a link to a betting site. I mean, I guess it was spam but I really don’t know. So given the three options I could 1) Possibly approve a spam; 2) Possibly not approve a legitimate comment or 3) Take out the link when I’m really not sure I think I like 3 best, even with the downsides you note.
I just added Comment Timeout 1.3 alpha 2 to my arsenal. The alpha will use your Bad Behavior logs to deny comments to bots regardless of the age of the post. Comment Timeout doesn’t modify your posts. Instead it determines whether comments should be allowed each time the page is requested. That means you can try the plugin and if it is not to your liking, you just turn it off. Give the alpha a spin. I think you will have far fewer of those head-scratcher comments.
I don’t use nofollow on my links, so I take a hard line on comments with links. If a comment has links, they’d better be relevant to the conversation or I don’t approve it.
I think the current trend among spammers is to actually do some work and create good comments. Most blogs nowadays employ spam protection or comment moderation so I guess actually putting some thought into the comment is the only way for a spam link to get through.