Comments

I’ve disabled Akismet.

After too many frustrations and problems with false-positives, I’ve decided to use a mathematical algorithm plug-in to filter through spam comments and good comments.

So, try it out if you’d like.

You should see something like “Please add 9 and 8” with a box to fill in (the correct answer is 17, btw). This should help with quality comments getting held up in the spam box.

If the math problem doesn’t show up, you might need to log out of WordPress (go to www.wordpress.com and log out) and then comment, but that should be a rarity.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

34 Replies to “Comments”

  1. Nice.

    Also has the pleasant side effect of keeping out the stupid people.

    (Sorry, I would have commented sooner, but it took me a few tries)

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  2. Hopefully this will also help Jim with his identity/gender crisis.

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  3. You might want to give SK2 a try

    I very rarely get any false positives, and it spots automated posts flawlessly

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  4. Thanks, Andy.

    I’ll check it out.

    Do you (or does anyone out there reading this) prefer SK2 to the math thing?

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  5. SK2 has its own captcha thing for posts that might be questionable. The primary reason to use SK2 is trackback spam.

    There are also other ways to prevent spam such as changing the name of the comments php file, although I haven’t got a URL to give you with that info.

    I would leave the maths in, and at the same time use very relaxed settings in SK2. As an example I even allow up to 5 links on my blog in SK2, for the rare chance someone might post 5 good links in one comment.

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  6. I love the math!

    I’ve been fiddling with things today actually for our own blog (shareasaleblog.com for those interested) as we’ve been targetted recently for blogspam and such. I was debating between the Captcha and another tool…but now I am thinking the match might be better… it is quite a simple way to help the problem, eh? nice work.

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  7. OMG… you all manage TFW.com? I’m an admitted Star Wars geek, and I’ve bought more than my fair share of Boba Fett statues and SW comics from them in the past few years. Way to land quality programs! Can I work for you and manage that program?? Wow.

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  8. >> math

    I don’t know, seems like it’d be pretty easy for the spammers to get through, as long as there are fingerprints. Looking at the source, this implementation isn’t trying to be evasive.

    Not to be a wet blanket or anything. It’ll stop lots of them for sure. But the spammers are writing OCR software to beat the captchas for crying out loud. They’re motivated. What this has going for it is low adoption, for now.

    >> SK2

    An impressive plugin. I’ve used both SK2 and Askimet pretty extensively and I like both. I think I favor SK2, however.

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  9. BTW, how come brian gets a big giant mug shot?

    I guess it’s better’n “Being Heather Paulson”. I’ll just take my little pic and shut up.

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  10. Geez… I’m trying to figure out SK2 with Ubuntu (which is proving difficult!). I’ve always wondered about his large ego… I mean avatar… as well. Not sure why it shows up like that, but it’s all ruled by MyBlogLog, so blame Eric (and now Yahoo!).

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  11. Tried to comment on another post and it didn’t seem to confirm it – just came up with “1” above the name field. Tried again and came up with a “2” and then I realised it had been double posted.

    Weird..

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  12. I see the little “1” when I make a comment as well, James. It has to do with the ajax used on the site to make the comment preview (below the comment box when you type) and I’ve been trying to figure out a php workaround so that it says something like “Thanks for the Comment Yo.” I’ll get that done soon.

    Thanks for the comments and story, nonetheless!

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  13. I get the same as James. There’s something off with the Ajax.

    The new comments do get posted (obviously) and a browser refresh produces them.

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  14. Fixed!

    Thanks for the incentive to get that done, guys.

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  15. Fast replies and fast fix. You’re on the ball there Sam!

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  16. Am I still Heather? Shouldn’t be.

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  17. Nope.

    But you’ll always be Heather to me, Jim.

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  18. I would comment, but I don’t know how to add.

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  19. LOL, now my head is tiny! Yahoo! has some fixin’ to do with MyblogLog!

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  20. looks about right to me, Jim. Exactly the same as what appears in the MBL widget.

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  21. “please add 2 + 1” c’mon, even bot can figure that one out.

    How about solving for x? e^3x = 50

    😉

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  32. […] I first saw this plugin over at CostPerNews. Sam’s been using it there for a few weeks now. Vlad raised the issue as well and in response to his entry, there’s also a discussion going on at Bumpzee about it. […]

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