Update: Spam Control
Alas, I had to do it …
Not too long ago, the comment-spammers finally pushed me over the edge. I didn’t want to do this, but I had to: On one post, the first five comments, all of which arrived shortly after the post was posted, were spam; three of them were sexually oriented, and one of those was for child pornography.
I now have the comments set up so that commenters have to prove they’re human. At the bottom of the comment window is a set of random letters, distorted so that a machine can’t read them. In order for a comment to go through, the commenter has to type that set of letters in a blank.
Unfortunately, that verification step is at the very bottom of the window, so it’s easy to miss. It is an inconvenience, but I decided it was better to inconvenience commenters than to allow posting of links that are totally inappropriate to the decorum of this place.
Since they forced me to change the way I do things, does this mean the spammers have won?
Not too long ago, the comment-spammers finally pushed me over the edge. I didn’t want to do this, but I had to: On one post, the first five comments, all of which arrived shortly after the post was posted, were spam; three of them were sexually oriented, and one of those was for child pornography.
I now have the comments set up so that commenters have to prove they’re human. At the bottom of the comment window is a set of random letters, distorted so that a machine can’t read them. In order for a comment to go through, the commenter has to type that set of letters in a blank.
Unfortunately, that verification step is at the very bottom of the window, so it’s easy to miss. It is an inconvenience, but I decided it was better to inconvenience commenters than to allow posting of links that are totally inappropriate to the decorum of this place.
Since they forced me to change the way I do things, does this mean the spammers have won?
posted by Carol Anne | 11:25 PM
3 Comments:
Jesse posted on Jerry's blog that when he typed in the password/distorted text, he just got a box and wasn't allowed to post. I'll try this comment to determine whether it works for me.
Yep, it worked.
OK, I have experienced the phenomenon that Jesse describes. I was posting on Write to Say It, and the first two times I typed in the word verification, I got the warning that I had to type the letters exactly (never mind that I had made doubly sure I was doing so), and the window was refreshed with a new word to type. The third time, my comment went through.
If this glitch continues to be a problem, I may go back to not requiring the verification step. It's a tough call to make: I don't want to make commenting harder, but I don't want to allow commentspam.
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