Spam is fucking annoying. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. And we’ve got plugins and blacklists and Christ on a fucking pogo stick trying to deal with it. It’s all good, because the last thing you want is to wake up to a blog where the last 17.000 comments were made by “Mr Poker” who professes to “Love online poker! Also I’m home alone! Come on over…”.
But seriously, you cannot let it interfere with the activities of your users. As soon as you do that, you’ve lost the game; the score is counted, the credits roll, and you’ve lost. There are several stupid ways currently being used to impeed user activity on blogs across the blogosphere, and aside from TypePad registration (forget it, I’m not getting a Microsoft Passport TypePad account), but this one takes the cake:
First of all, the designer inside me cringes at the sight of that thing; not in a million years will something that ugly grace the big B. And secondly, it’s entirely unintelligible. Is it the number 4 or the number 9? Are all those 4’s, 9’s or a mix? To be honest, I have no idea, and as you can see I failed the first test; and I’m a fucking human! Of all the entities on planet Earth, I at least should be able to recognize a number when I see it. I didn’t go to school for years on end for no reason!
And Google, I’m also talking to you. I know that I seem to have run into this problem more than most people, but that warped text you sometimes present for me to interpret; well it’s just not going to fly!
It’s the opinion of this humble blogger, that implementing measures such as these to hinder spammers is akin to filling the cinema screens with anti-piracy ads, when the people you’re ‘yelling at’ is the very same audience that just paid you!
The truth they don’t want you to know is that they have a bunch of trained orangutans “writting” those numbers.
You and me both. I am getting fed up of having roadblocks put in my way each time I try to interact online. I mean, if you don’t want me to comment just say so!
Seeing how widespread CAPTCHA’s have become, it’s a frightening prospect to imagine what they’ll think off next.
You’re right, even I would never implement such a thing on my site. I also have lots of problems recognizing those numbers, and I think we’re not alone on this.
(By the way, I got my first dose of TrackBack spam yesterday.)
Spammers have been bashing on my old posts for a while now, so bad that I’m starting to dislike comments until proven otherwise. I think the next step for me is a comment preview thing as Anne van Kesteren has. That’s just perfect for me. No unintelligible CAPTCHAs, no memberships. I like previews :)
I personally I don’t like previews, mostly because they aren’t so much previews as they are: “Are you sure? Are you really sure?!” roadblocks…
Well, doesn’t that reading from a graphic warp the standards thing anways?
For my site, I’ve implemented that one spam plugin called Stopgap extreme. It requires users to have javascript turned on, but apart from that, it’s perfect. I’ve had a few waves of spam coming between 29th and 30th of December, with 50 tries each, and they were all detected and sent to hell.
Well, I inserted a captcha field into my comments some days ago. I was tired to remove the 100+ SPAMs I got over the weekend. And I think, the font that is used on my pages could be read clearly and the user don’t runs into trouble when entering the characters. And, I think captchas are the only way to prevent SPAM in blogs. Until the spammers have good image recog algorithms…
The WP plugin I’m using to control my spam in pretty dandy. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it adds a hidden field to the comment form, and if the field contents are submitted it blocks the post or something.
It works because /apparently/ spambots use wp-comments.php and not the comments form. Nifty.
Does anyone know the name of the plugin Adder is talking about?
That’s another thing that really bugs me with some of these spam plugins, then send the spams TO HELL! Whereas I’d like to chance to redeem any stray comments that might’ve been caught by accident.
I agree with you on this Michael, I fail the “read these letters & numbers” every time at least once. I saw one once where the background changed constantly, so it was even harder to read the box!
Well, actually, they were sent to my specified gmail account where I was able to verify them being of true spam nature. So that’s no problem really.
This is a problem, Michael, but keeping the over 200 spams off my web site each day is worth the sacrifice of one valid comment. Sometimes they just get overlooked in the mass despamming. I also do not like the graphical measure. Being colorblind often doesn’t help either. I can never seem to purchase tickets on TicketMaster’s web site because of this problem.
I feel for you I really do. I set up my blog a while ago, within a day I’d received about 5,000 comments from the same poker group! VERY nearly made me not bother with the blog, but after reading some advice, thankfully I’ve not had any yet.
And I agree, having those verification boxes is a real problem. Letters illegible, colours clashing (jhary mentioned colour blindness – good point!!).
Hope you manage to get a fix soon….
That plugin is most likely “Spam Karma.” I love it, personally. As of right now it has killed 386 legitimate spam comments in about 2 weeks with no false positives. I would be simply insane by this point if I didn’t have it.
Ive been having problems posting to a site that uses spam karma, it doesnt seem like me at all yet im not putting in any links or seemingly spam-like words.
Kittens Spamwords and Spaminator have done me fine, sometimes the odd spam creeps through but once Ive added it to the spam words, its blocked.
@Patrick
The much-talked-about SpamKarma has this feature. I’m using it, it’s quite good – maybe the best – but not perfect. Which brings me to what Michael said…
@Michael
I’d like that feature, too, and the only workaround I see is that you set your plugin to inform you about every deleted comment (SpamKarma sends the comment text along), using a separate mail account as gibarian suggested.
Then again, there’s no easy way to “re-activate” the wrongly deleted comments. You’d have to copy&paste them on your own.
@matthew
The “problem” with SpamKarma is, that it’s updated very often. There was a bug, for instance, with some AOL clients that used a special proxy server. The SpamKarma author fixed it quickly, but if a site administrator misses an update, your comment gets caught.
Why I like SpamKarma is because of the multiple methods of catching the bad guys. It’s not only spam words or certain rules of how comments are submitted, but also a blacklist that synchronizes with a central server. So the more people use SpamKarma, the better it gets just by that.
I have to agree. Those little security code thingamajiggies are retarded. In regards to comment spam, I’ll just keep approving mine on my own.
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of these poker spam comments lately. Luckily, it caught all 48 of them, and I don’t have any spam protection at all.
As the old saying goes, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with Captchas in principle, but I agree that implementations are often flawed.
I don’t want comment spam on my website. Since the introduction of a Captcha system, I’ve had only one or two questionable posts. So the technology, from my point of view, works.
However, I took great care when I put my Captcha system together:
I also considered the system from an accessibility perspective. My images are relatively high contrast, the font used is legible and the text isn’t distorted.
Finally I provide an alternative, Captcha-free, comment form to registered users (who undertake an email-verified registration).
I surveyed my readers as to the utility or hindrance the Captcha provided and the responses were overwhelmingly positive. I had no complaints since either. So, until something better comes along, I’m sticking with Captchas.
[Further details]
Ah, i also hate those number validation grids. Actually, a couple of days ago, i simply failed miserably to write down the numbers in a friend’s blog.
Anyhow, MT blacklist is good enough for my anti-spam needs. I’m not sure how do the scripts available for WP work, but in mt-blacklist, you can have certain keywords as flags in comments, say, casino, poker, etc, or certain urls.
Again, maybe it’s because my blog is small, that i don’t have much problems with spam (i do get a couple spam comments daily, they’re stopped by blacklist).
BTW, about TypeKey, the huge flaw is that it doesn’t remember your details. Say, you slog in to comment in one site, and you go back to the same site the next day, you will have to log in again. That’s just unacceptable.
Hmm, what about some kind of moderation? not sure if there is actually a plugin for WP, but maybe moderate comments that contain certain keywords?
Achhhh Spam makes me so mad too… Anyhoo- Viagra anyone? Maybes some help with that Mortage— no? Hmm, I have 10 penis-enlargers….
Thus far the WP spam “keywords” list is working for me.
I just started using Kitten’s Spaminator which seems to be working pretty well. The poker guys seem to have gone to war with my site. In the last 24 hours Spaminator has blocked a whopping 692 comments – at some points yesterday they were coming in at two per minute. It was nuts but for the time being it seems to work.
I’m with you all the way on this. I’m very interested in interface design, and I refuse to have comments that require more input than name, email, website and the actual comment.
Every single time I’ve seen a blog with a CAPTCHA I thought “nah, my comment wasn’t important anyway” and didn’t write it. So the CAPTCHA doesn’t only block spam, it blocks a lot of normal users as well. And it doesn’t have to be computer-illiterate people who don’t understand what that stupid distorted image is and what to do with it; I’ve used computers since I was six years old and I still loathe CAPTCHAs even if I understand their purpose.
A good anti-spam system should just sit in the background and do its magic with as little input as possible required from the users and, most importantly, the blog owner. It is after all the blog owner who will get all those mails about new comments.
I had to fill in a CAPTCHA on Fileplanet yesterday to get a key for the Guild Wars event this weekend.
The problem was that the CAPTCHA didn’t appear. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t killed by AdBlock; it just wasn’t there. I checked the resources on the page (thank god for all the features of Firefox), and I finally found it there. But it didn’t appear in the page. That’s poor execution in a nutshell.
Have you tryed to write “poker” in your Options>Discussion in the options?
Whilst having a preview button acts as a roadblock, it is a necessity. It may be annoying and may prevent some people taking their comments further but, in my opinion, sometimes you have to have something to prevent another…. aka SPAM.
CAPTCHAs are just ugly!
And preview buttons can be a godsend if blogs don’t have live preview as you have. Too often have I written an entry only to discover that my HTML got eaten alive, despite the blog saying it’s enabled, forcing me to make an “oops, here are the links” followup that just looks ugly.
Very interesting you mention this, because what would happen if the user was blind? how would they enter those numbers and letters?
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/01/01/11-captcha
Some very very interesting ideas going on, its well worth a read.
I have a typepad account, infact I forgot I had one but then I remember I got one when I tried to install MT and found WordPress better.
And now they’re talking about audio CAPTCHAs. Yay, disrupt my surfing habits even further by disturbing the music I’m listening to.
I’ve used Kitten’s Spaminator and Spam Karma (seperately) and both worked pretty well for me…
Johan,
Oh yay! Audio CAPTCHA’s, next it will require one to insert some body part into a suitable recepticle, with the downside of a (false) spam hit triggering a violent electric shock.. actually, that’s not a bad idea..
There has to be an easier, less mind frying, eye squinting, brain hurting way to kill spam with minimal user input..
impede – to block, prevent, or deny access or passage
impeed – ???
;)
impeed – to block, prevent or deny access to taking a leak? :)
Eeeeverone’s a comedian! :)
My friend created a variant to this kind of “roadblock” and since then I’ve had ZERO SPAM. It also hasn’t affected my readers because I insisted that the numbers be legible. Now, I don’t love it, which is why we’re working on a newer better version that uses an icon match system. I’ll tell you more about it when it’s ready for unveiling. In the mean time, I’m sticking with my version of the numbers game.
Hey, you clearly don’t like this method but until you come up with something better I’ll just have to remind you that I have ZERO SPAM now. Can you say the same? :)
Yes, I actually can :)
That said, I have also lost legitimate comments to the spam filters…
From SixApart’s new guide to comment spam. Which I first read as “Huh? They want to tell us how to spam?”
Although you may cringe at the authetication image, I think that the version I’ve installed on my blog is readable and it works (zero spam until they started hitting me with trackbacks yesterday). It’s worth a look:
Gudlyf’s Authimage
You are my new hero! I can’t agree with you more! I fail those idiodic spam tests too.