The Plague of the Spam Bots

The comment spam on this site was really getting out of control! While I'm sure we would all love to know where to get those cheap pharmaceuticals, maybe another place and time would be better for that! ;)

It's actually been a major chore to regularly go through hundreds of anonymous spam comments only to find a legitimate post here and there that got lost in the shuffle for days. :( So after some anti-spam module hunting and adding a bit of custom code to my site, I think I may have found a way to keep spam mostly out -- knock on wood!

No links are allowed in comments unfortunately, but then that was never an issue with legitimate posters anyway. And the new system now allows for legit visitors to have their comments automatically posted rather than having to go through an admin queue which always kind of sucked for everyone.

I don't know if the new posting parameters will work 100% to keep spam out, but I think it should be an overall improvement to the site. :)

Comments

Felicity Merriman's picture

Well that's reassuring, though I'm worried that shrewd bot operators would find a way to get around such restrictions just as what they did on YouTube before. In my case I tend to use a Q&A CAPTCHA system though the drawback with it is visitors should be familiar with the site's subject matter before they are able to comment on the post.
Little Raven's picture

That's a pretty clever idea, hadn't considered it. So far so good on the spam filtering, but I actually kinda like your idea. I suppose very common questions on the site's subject matter would be mostly doable for anyone even vaguely familiar with the topic.

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