Comment spammers seem to be clever people, here are three interesting patterns I’ve noticed to try to get past an approval system (these are all real examples from the past few days) –

Flattery

These comments will look something like:

Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.

or:

Thank you for this valuable post.  It changed my mind.

Who wouldn’t approve something like that?

Jokes

This is the latest form of comment spam that I’ve seen.  It looks like they’ve built up a large set of bad jokes like:

Did you hear about the cannibal who was expelled from school? He was buttering up his teacher.

or:

How you get down from an elephant? You don’t, you get down from ducks.

At least they make the process of approving comments more entertaining.

Irrelevant Insights

These comments are designed to be vague enough to be insightful in any situation:

Though Apple is expensive, its stocks rise quickly.