Death To Blog Spam Arrgghhh
Listen to this article
I've been using MT-Blacklist for sometime now and while it does a good job of moderating the spam, I'd rather it didn't even get that far. So in a last ditch effort to eradicate comment spam all together, I've just installed a different kind of solution. This plugin puts up a security code graphic that you must enter in order to submit the comment. Although there have been some complaints about this technique on the grounds that it is discrimatory towards people with impaired vision, I'm going to give a whirl anyway and see how it goes. Apparently the guy who wrote the plugin has also recently written a bayesian filter as well but personally, like with MT-Blacklist, I don't have the time to sift through all the comments, deleting the spam.
Update: 1st November 2004 - Seems to be working a treat. I've had not one blog spam comment in the last 24 hours but people have successfully commented manually. I usually get around 6-10 spam comments in the same period.Update: 4th November 2004 - It's amusing to look at my web logs and see all the access attempts from dodgy sites, no doubt attempting to post comment spam and failing dismally!
Comments
As a legally blind person, go for it! Spam is sucking the joy out of the net and anything we can do is worth a try. I've just started using TMDA on my mail server, and it lets you generate a special email address for sending from a particular source, so you can track where all the email addresses you hand out are going. Perhaps a commenting mechanism that issued a single-use ticket to the commenter via email might work as well. So when commenting, you would have to supply a valid email address. I know this would irritate some folks, too, of course...
Posted by: James Ross | October 31, 2004 09:14 AM
WANNA GET HARD??? GET UR VIAGRA HERE!!! LO PRICE!!
http://221.123.5.22/@dodgy-url=yes&should-i-click-here=no
(PS: Kidding!)
Posted by: Neil | November 1, 2004 11:59 PM
:P
Posted by: Simon Harris | November 2, 2004 09:19 AM
There's a difference between "legally blind" and blind. Someone who's "legally blind" can zoom in on the text, but someone who's blind will typically use a screen reader. The solution that you have enabled on this blog is not valid HTML (the IMG tag is missing a required ALT attribute) and does not allow users who rely on a screen reader or a refreshable Braille display to add comments.
Posted by: Damian Yerrick | July 27, 2005 04:16 PM
Damian,
Agreed. To be honest, I have absolutely no idea what is required to support people who are _actually_ blind however, about the only _useful_ thing I can think of putting in the ALT tag is something to the effect that "due to a lot of spam, you have to enter this secret number in the field below." If you think that would help, then sure, I'll do it.
Posted by: Simon Harris | July 27, 2005 06:42 PM
I saw somewhere a system that let you play an audio file of the number. Can't remember where I saw it however.
Posted by: Glen Stampoultzis | July 27, 2005 07:50 PM
Spam is sucking the joy out of the net and anything we can do is worth a try
Posted by: Mike | August 6, 2006 12:46 AM
I haven't been up to much lately. I've basically been doing nothing , but it's not important. I can't be bothered with anything recently. I've just been letting everything happen without me lately.
Posted by: TramadoL43142 | October 24, 2006 11:35 PM