I got a little side tracked, but the process of combing through the archives, fixing things, creating thumbnails, and adding notes and commentary is coming along nicely, if a bit slowly.
Unfortunately, some robot out there decided that it likes my website and won’t leave me alone. Started a little after midnight, random pages in the archives started recieving a huge influx of comment spam. All of it is generic crap like “An answer from an eexprt! Thanks for contributing.” and I can’t even figure out what the spambot’s goal is. Also, every comment has one intentional typo in one word, presumably to throw off automated spam filters. Lucky for us, my site doesn’t have an automated spam filter, it has a manual one. Any time someone tries to post a comment on any post, their comment automatically gets witheld and doesn’t post until an admin (me) approves it manually, unless the poster has had a comment approved previously. Which means none of you should see one single spam post. But the moderation queue is still getting full fast enough to annoy the crap out of me, so for the moment I’ve disabled commenting on any posts more than two weeks old.
I’m thinking over the various way to get around this. Adding a captcha that needs to be filled out in order to post a comment might do the trick, but I really don’t want to have to do that. For the moment I’m just blacklisting the spambot’s IP addresses and hoping for the best, but I’m hoping for a third option. Commenting is still enabled on this post, so if any of ya’ll have a suggestion to deal with this nuisance, I’d love to hear it.
And once again, thank you all for your continued patience as I pull this site together.
Not a new suggestion, but support of a simple captcha being required to post.
I looked into it, and it wouldn’t be too hard to set up… but I HATE captchas with a passion. They perform a necessary service and I’d usually rather have them than spam, but they’re still annoying as hell. In the end I might not have a choice though. =(
How about adding a captcha that needs to be filled out for only the first post per user? That way, the spam can’t get in, and real people don’t have to deal with these things more than once?
If you’re using WordPress/ComicPress … isn’t there a function that requires people to create an account and be logged in?
That could cut down on spambots.
This is option #2 on the list, after captchas.
Too bad there’s no way to just enter your information just once and automatically have an account with all Lego fan sites–it’s the main reason I only recently registered at EuroBricks and still haven’t gotten around to joining the BCN forums. Ah, well, I can dream…
I would prefer some kind of account-based spam control over a captcha for every post, that way I could fill out the captcha once (to make the account) and then be done with it.
Ah, the wonders of the internet! Doesn’t really take the bots long to find something, huh?
I’d volunteer to help clear out the moderation queue thing, buuut I don’t think you’d take me up on it. Best of luck finding a good solution, though! None really spring to mind.
Perhaps you should talk to your ISP and ask them if they have any affordable anti-spambot defenses. Beyond that I would not mind filling in a captcha if it means the ability to post comments.