Today's comment spam review process:
DELETE FROM comments WHERE moderation_required = 1;
Deleted rows: 9699 (Query took 2.0489 sec)
Apologies to anyone whose comment ended up in the moderation queue. I normally keep on top of it, but a couple of weeks of putting it off and what started as a small pile of comments to manage has quickly ballooned into a 10,000 comment monster. Time for a comment spam prevention rethink, I reckon.
8 Comments
I wondered why all my comments about a great new poker site, or where to get cheap v1agra (now this comment is definitely getting moderated) never got posted ;)
Might be time to look at a system similar to wp-gatekeeper by Eric Meyer. A captcha system without the accessibility problems of using images. I've been using it for a while now, and while Askimet still has to block some spam messages its not as bad as it could be.
The only problem I have is from actual people submitting comments which *could* be valid but are most likely just looking for a link back. They're always along the lines of 'X is great, thanks for posting about it!'
I know they don't add any additional information to the post, but I don't like to remove them incase it is a genuine show of appreciation, cause that would somehow seem rude(!?)
And of course I don't want to scare people away from telling me how great I am ;)
What I might end up doing is marking those types of comments as 'temp' and then run a cron job or something every week to remove any which are over X days old. Leaving only comments that add additional relevant information in the archive.
#1, Aaron Bassett, United Kingdom, 27 April 2007. Reply to this.
Do you use akismet? Since installing it last year I don't get any spam comments (or at least very few)
#2, cameron, United States, 28 April 2007. Reply to this.
Aaron: I'm trying really hard to avoid the captcha option :). I'm a little surprised your comment went unmoderated too. Something's not working as it should be! I think, for now, I'm going to add a hidden form field with a generated code. Only comments submitted with valid codes would be accepted - that should curb the automated spam at least. Cameron: Yes, I'm using akismet. For the most part it catches spam comments, and puts them in the moderation queue, but it's not reliable.
#3, Dave Child, Unknown, 28 April 2007. Reply to this.
..?
#4, Anders Moen, Norway, 6 May 2007. Reply to this.
Don't know why you're trying to avoid captcha option. But It really helps prevent automated comments. I think you should give it a send thought.
#5, Converse, Australia, 13 May 2007. Reply to this.
I avoid the CAPTCHA option because I think making authentic users do more work to compensate for spammers is going about things backwards. I want a system that doesn't affect genuine commenters and makes life harder for spammers.
#6, Dave Child, Unknown, 14 May 2007. Reply to this.
Dave, I am working on such a system. Perhaps if I get it working, I'll let you know.
If the system works, it should catch 95-98% of spam I reckon.
#7, Dan, Canada, 29 May 2007. Reply to this.
Your site found in Google: http://google.com/search?q=mjx
#8, Visitor785, United States, 13 July 2007. Reply to this.