There is a widespread assumption by many bloggers that comments on old posts are mostly spam. There are several WordPress plugins to prevent commenting on old posts, even posts as recent as one month old like, for example, Akismet. This is plain wrong and can result in losing many valuable comments. Such practices should be discouraged by bloggers. Let me explain why.

Some blogs, like this blog for example, publish guides and tips which are not bound by time and can be valid even after years. Several of my guides and articles, even from 2004, are still referenced and widely commented upon. Preventing comments on such posts or assuming they are spam is incorrect and will definitely result in rejecting many genuine and often informative comments.

Initially blogs were started on the premise of maintaining a web log or journal. Hence blog by nature is chronological. However in practice while blogs are used for time bound articles like what you did today morning or late in the night (sorry, I am not interested), they are often used for publishing many timeless articles too like, for example, my blog or Steve Pavlina's blog or ProBlogger.

Spam prevention shouldn't be hard. Too much well-meaning but basically flawed strategies have been used over the years for stopping comment spam and preventing comments on old posts add to that list.