Published Nov 7, 2004
If you look down at the bottom of the page you’ll see a new form for posting comments. That’s because, today, I spent three hours of my time trying to save this blog from comment spammers.
I realized the problem was out of hand when four things happened:
- MT-Blacklist was catching about 7 attempted comment spammings a day
- MT-Blacklist was letting about 3 attempted comment spammings a day get past, requiring me to check new comments daily and try to both delete spam and add new spam terms to the blacklist
- I realized I couldn’t keep up with all of the new pharmaceuticals being released
- I added “google” and “thanks” to the blacklist
Just like they have almost ruined e-mail for the rest of us, spammers are trying to ruin blogs. They’re jumping on blogs with any kind of Google PageRank (the good stuff that makes you come at the top of a page of search results) and posting links to other sites. The effect is that these other sites get soome PageRank of their own from that link, and go up in Google results. So, my blog makes credit repair ripoff scammers and Viagra peddlers get good Google results.
I suppose I should be flattered that I have enough PageRank that the spammers bother to visit. But mostly I’m annoyed that they post comments that add nothing to the value of my blog at all. I go to quite some trouble to create something of minimal value here! Goddamn leeches.
So I did what I had to do. I upgraded to MovableType 3 featuring TypeKey. Theoretically, this means that you can only post a comment if:
- I review your comment and deem it ok to publish
- You have a TypeKey
I can’t get the second part to work, unfortunately, so at the moment I have to review all comments. This sucks about as much as having to watch out for spammers. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out what’s wrong in a few days to a couple of weeks; otherwise I’ll probably just turn off commenting. Ah well, such is the tragedy of the commons.
After removing my old copy of MT-Blacklist (see the MT Forums), all is well. Comments are automatically posted, and community lives! Ha ha, I have defeated the spammers for hours, even days! Mwa ha ha!
woot!
your new technology seems to be working from my end.
talk to you later.
Yes, but, sadly enough, you were supposed to be automatically posted since you have a TypeKey. Instead, I had to:
Kinda annoying, huh? Better than comment spam tho. And, somehow it’s supposed to be possible to automatically approve your posts. Hopefully I’ll figure out what that how is.
This is another test comment