How to validate comment’s email?

People use false emails because they 1) don’t want their emails harvested and get bombarded with spam, or 2) they want to remain anonymous. Granted, you may not fall under #1, but they don’t know that – and people assume the worst. If you force people to put in a valid email address, and they dont’ want to, they won’t comment. You may as well just force registration (check both “Anyone can register” and “Users must be logged in to comment”) if you want valid email addresses and/or no anonymous posting. Then you’ll have the valid email addresses, and people can’t post comments without registering first.

doodlebee, I guess there are two sides to this issue. email harvesting vs too anonymous guest comments.

I really don’t want comments with bogus emails and if the guests feel that their emails will get harvested by spam senders then they’ll have two options which would be to 1)register or 2)not leave a comment at all.

That’s the reason why I asked if there was a way to achieve the comment’s email validation thingy.

Actually, I like this idea. I hate it when people use fake email addresses, and I delete comments that have them, when I find them.

I mean, yeah, anonymity is indeed important, but not for *everything*. Let’s not be massively paranoid here…

The way I’d do it would be to shoot them an email to validate that the email is correct, but only the first time. After that, they’re valid and can comment all they like with that email, without revalidating each time..

Of course, anybody else can comment with that email too at that point, but if you don’t show the emails anywhere, then nobody will know what emails are validated and what emails are not.

Ott42, that’s correct. Engadget.com does it that way. Validate once and it remembers your email or ip or what have you (I really don’t know their algorithm logic used at their site) for a certain period of time/hours

I would love to see this as it covers the middle ground between completely open commenting and forcing visitors to create accounts simply to leave a comment.

Of course I’d love to see someone clean up WordPress Ideas as well, remove the spam, close out those idea already in the wp code or covered by plugins, etc. ??

I’m just chiming in to say that I’m very much for e-mail verification for comments. Forcing people to create a login discourages them to just jump in and join the conversation. But, if they could fire off their comment, then later click the link that shows up in their e-mail, then you get their participation with as little labor as possible on their part.

I’m all for this one as well. Due to the nature of my site I get quite a few comments from people using bogus email addresses trying to hide their identity. (Which is a bad thing on my site as it deals with company reputations.) I’d love to force the first comment be approved not only by me for content, but also email address verified.

to hide my identity, i use several valid email address and hiding my “real” email address used for commenting or any browsing activities.

IMO, it’s simpler for admin if there is an option to drop automatically the comment if the email address is not valid one.