In the last 24 hours there have been more than 30 spamment attempts, not including the ones that are blocked entirely because they include certain magic words. (I know: By some standards, that’s chicken feed, but it’s a big increase from the 2-6 a day I had been getting. But then, traffic to w.a.r. has been increasing as well.)
None have made it through. Each one is an annoyance and a timewaster. Each one encourages me to do something I’d rather not do, like adding a Capcha-style “type in the vague letters” blocker or some other spam blocker.
Complimenting me on the quality of this blog or certain posts won’t do it–particularly when exactly the same compliment appears on 15 posts in 5 hours. Saying “that’s a good argument” really doesn’t make it when pointed to either the welcome post or one of the others that makes no arguments at all.
I just blocked one more medication name; those are easy to handle. The harder ones are spamments where the only apparent motive is to increase traffic to, or Google level of, or whatever, the URL attached to the commenter’s name. As in all those complimentary comments.
The latest group has been truly weird, since the URL doesn’t even work.
Or are there just people out there who dislike blogs and email enough to try to make them useless?
If so, give it up: It won’t work.
Update 4/9: 23 more spamments, 22 of them from the same idiot sender, plus Jessamyn’s; I’ll send email to Blake asking him to add Jessamyn’s suggested plugin to my directory. (There’s actually a Capcha plugin there already…but I really don’t want to activate it.)
Second update 4:11 Blake’s installed Spam Karma 2 and I’ve activated it, starting with “normal” settings for now–but I’ll toughen as need be. (And I was astonished to see just how many dozens of spamments WordPress had been retaining…without me even seeing them.)
This is a wordpress blog right? I would seriously recommend just using Spam Karma 2. I almost never think about comment spam now that I have it enabled. Spam queues up, almost all valid comments get through and you don’t even have to read the spammy comments, they just eventually disappear into the void. I’ve been using it for a few months, trapped thousands of spam comments and I’ve only had a few good comments get trapped which I whitelisted and it’s never happened again.
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
I second Jessamyn’s Spam Karma 2 recommendation. I was getting about 30-50 spam comments per day until I installed it a couple of months ago. Ever since? Bliss!
I’ve had very good luck with Spam Karma 2 on lis.dom. For some reason, though, my other blog gets far, far more spam, and more of it seems to slip through Spam Karma 2. I finally turned the settings up to “total beeatch” (SK2 lingo, not mine), which has cut down on it a bit. . . it’s all very mysterious.
Thanks. Based on these comments, I’ve asked Blake to copy Spam Karma 2 to my directory; I’ll activate it as soon as it’s available, and see what happens. Right now, the chief problem is one bizarre poster from an IP address with no reverse DNS entry (!), apparently trying to increase pagerank for a URL that doesn’lt seem to work (!), making the usual fatuous “what a great log!” comment over and over and over…
Turns out there is a Capcha plugin on my directory. If Spam Karma doesn’t work, I will, reluctantly, activate Capcha.
Spam Karma has some pretty good features, one of which is a CAPCHA implementation for people who would otherwise see their comments go to the spam box. I havenn’t turned it on myself, but it’s a good way to get benefits from the CAPCHA functionality while not making most commenters have to use it. If you want any help with SK once you’ve installed it (I use many of the default settings but changed to overall level of spam killing from Normal to Kinda Mean, or something similar) please drop me an email, I’d be happy to help.
Thanks. The control panel looks fairly straightforward. I don’t mind dealing with a modest amount of spam, so for now I won’t mess with most parameters (and actually increased the time range for “active” posts). I’ll tune as seems necessary.
It sure was a revelation, though, after turning on Spam Karma, to see that very long list of posts that WP had trapped on its own (thanks to the set of words I added)–although I thought those posts were just deleted, not held as spam. After the first 100, going back four days, I just changed “purge after 30 days” to “purge after 5 days” and got rid of the whole mess, then changed back the purge time.
As with any other use of spam control or whatever, my apologies in advance to anyone whose comment might not make it through. I think that, overall, there shouldn’t be much change…and I really do hope to avoid the draconian measures (full-time moderation, “registration,” full-time Capcha). The high (and highly unpredictable!) conversational level on this blog is a delight, and helps keep me blogging once in a while and writing almost every day.
May I just add a profound thanks to Jessamyn, Amanda, Laura, and Blake. While one persistent spammer seems to have given up, others keep arising–and, so far, Spam Karma 2 is precisely trapping them all. It’s a LOT easier to check the spam panel once every day or two (to release anything improperly trapped) than to get all that email about moderation…
First names used here because that’s how people signed their comments. In general, I’m trying to adhere to the idea that full names get used on first mention, when the full name’s used in the source.
(Yes, I know, West, Etches-Johnson, Crossett, Carver. Still, when we’re all first-naming in comments, I think it’s OK.)