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At the very least it seems logical to eliminate mechanisms that allow a disabled feature to be used, such as the chats mentioned.   The point about world owners possibly wanting to direct chat to an alternative source seems entirely valid.

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I see lots of good suggestions here. SOMETHING needs to happen. I have bot/spam comments on most of my manuscripts, most of which I can't delete because of errors/bugs. I like worldanvil but I am doing a lot more writing these days that strictly worldbuilding, and this issues is making me reconsider where I spend my money.

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So I would instead of a nuclear option first ask the team to consider....why does the worldbuilding side of the content created here seem to have less of this problem/nearly none. I've been running the experiment myself (I suggest everyone try it) where I post manuscript chapters as prose in my world setting under a category I've named *Tales from Valerick*. (I've taken a couple month hiatus cause health reasons and getting a Pathfinder campaign under way)   Interestingly every manuscript piece ends up with at least 1-2 bot comments within a couple weeks. Prose articles in world shared just as loudly and often to both followers of world and me, as well as on the discord server and yet....*crickets* on the prose articles and worldbuilding side when it comes to bot/spam/scam comments compared to manuscripts. Why? What is different about these two systems, if anything? That would be the query they might wish to investigate first.

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I hadn't been able to delete the bot comments, so I stopped trying, but I would love to get rid of them. While I appreciate real people commenting on my stories, since I only get bots now, comments are no longer useful.

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YES! please oh yes please. I use Manuscripts regularly, and I'm getting hit DAILY with bots and scammers flooding the comments. They come in as freemen so I have no idea if they are a real person, or a real problem!

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Any option that puts more power over the work into the hands of the one who did the work, that is the ethical choice. Add on top the excellent explainer here of additional uses beyond bot-halting, and I cannot see why the users World Anvil wants here would NOT appreciate this option. Thank you for suggesting it.

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I think better controls by the author would be best, but in the meantime, being able to disable comment submission (until a better solution is developed) would help many authors.

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I'd welcome some improvements to give greater control here, even if I'm not exactly sure of the best solution. I've recently started to get a number of comments on old manuscripts from WA accounts that open and then close. It looks increasingly likely based on the style of the messages that they've been generated by an AI to be flattering and to try and trigger engagement. Of course author's want engagement with genuine readers and I am adopting the policy of replying politely and honestly to the posts that stay up even though I suspect there is just a machine at the end of them. It's a bit dispiriting to have to question the motives of every reply and I'd hate to miss a genuine reader or be rude to one, but at the same time I can see it could become a pain dealing with this kind of spam.

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While the idea of automated moderation for new accounts is not a bad idea, it should also have things like subscription status or as thereasonwhy said should have either a bio or the abiility to filter out words in case new accounts are human made and want to comment on some works that they like as there are some newer users who might be reccomended to this site by writer friends or maybe DND players who see things other than DND that they want to get into and it wouldn't be fair for them to be flagged as spam when they are simply new to the site.

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I really love the vision, and while this is a far better strategy than anything we're currently working with, I feel as though closing down comments may not be conducive to the legitimate users in regards to us building our communities on WA. I worry that audiences of smaller creators might see the removal of comments from manuscripts as more of a deterrent to engage on WA, and we all know that interaction is crucial.   Thank you for bringing up the bot spamming and the need to fix the delete button. I can see if we had a function to field our own incoming manuscript comments/guestbook posts, as that's where the bots flock to, but I can also understand how staggering that could be for the larger creators.   I really like the idea of flagging new accounts for authors and world-builders; maybe the addition of comment locking an account after a certain number of comments/posts in a day/month could help. (since the bots come to WA every 2 - 3 months.), or the potential spam user can be flagged for both author/wb and WA devs upon a certain number of comments/posts.

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I do like this idea, but it should be expanded beyond just manuscripts. I think a good way to start is to see the comment frequency of suspected bot accounts, or new accounts, and limit the allowed time.   I personally recieve more bot comments than legitimate ones, and I doubt new human users just start commenting on everything they see.   I'm generally in favor of the idea, but outright blocking the ability to comment does seem kinda blunt.  

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I like the idea of being able to remove the option, but I do not like this being the option to deal with this outbreak. Just removing commenting capabilities seems very blunt and heavy handed. I still want people to be able to comment on everything, but having additional control over manuscripts (that badly needs many updates) is quite appealing.   I think outright limiting commenting capabilities for manuscripts isn't needed. I think the problem lies in the way WA allows free accounts to operate. They are not watched, they are not limited and they are free to do spam whatever they feel like. This is attacking a symptom, not the problem. Accounts that tick off these categories should be flagged for review.   1) Free account   2) accounts that immediately start commenting on other authors work's without any content themselves.   3) Should accounts from above mentioned issues fill their world with "slop" to circumvent these requirements, should be flagged as well.   I think a rework of how the free accounts operate is more useful. Force them to create an Author's Bio. Enforce content creation or subscriber activity (for players in Campaigns), Enforce some time of character creation. If you have to make these bots work before being able to comment, they won't attack WA as low hanging fruit.

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I feel there isn't enough moderation for the comments in general and turning off comments should be only one of the options available to me. There should be options to limit commenters by age or by subscription status or by if they are following or have been following for a certain amount of time. There should be ways to limit the new account auto bots from spamming me. I'm getting swamped and can't keep up.

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I fully support allowing users to have more freedom to decide where they would like comments to be enabled especially in the face of the current spam bot comments and the added work in moderating those comments. However, since targeted deletion of spam comments should work, I highly recommend anyone that has received the error to go upvote the bug report that kaixabu created (https://www.worldanvil.com/udan-tracker/c1144280-0550-41f5-95ad-17ce762b3007/view) so that the devs know how many people this is effecting.

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Not being able to delete the comments has literally made me delete and remake the **entire manuscripts** just to remove them (since all i had were spammer ones). Had to rebuild all my article links of course.   Now, I have another, and it's triggering since I can't delete the comment itself. I'm holding off deleting the manuscripts again in case even more appear so that I can do multiples with one changeover.   However, if Truly Legitimate comments should show up, this won't be an option anymore. *SOMETHING*, if not this exact remedy, needs to be done, please. Thank you~

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WA needs more moderation tools in general and disabling comments is a big one. Ideally, this is in addition to other changes to reduce the spam/scam comments. Nobody should feel forced into disabling comments just to avoid spam.

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Anything that prevents bots from being toxic sounds like an improvement to me.

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