December 3, 2004

COMMENTING CHANGE

As you are undoubtedly aware, the comments to this blog are of exceptional quality and make this ongoing discussion here richer and more rewarding. Along with the great comments, we get bombarded with "comment spam" on an ongoing basis. We have been addressing the problem using a Movable Type plugin called MT-Blacklist. This has helped, but we have made some additional changes to try to thwart the spammers.

Now, when you click on the comments link at the end of a post on the main page, you will be taken to the comments section of that individual post archive.

Thanks for all the comments (we're over 93,000) and keep 'em coming.

A good resource for combatting spam on movable type is Learning Movable Type: Concerning Spam

Posted by Stephen Judd at December 3, 2004 6:52 AM
Comments

Interesting. I just put in MTBlackList at Junkyard Blog to deal with spam. According to the logs, there was one attempt at comment spam after installation and none since. It's as if the spammers gave up after the first MTBlackList block, although I had presumed it was automated. Could it really be a human pasting this stuff in comments?

Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at December 3, 2004 11:31 AM

AOG,

I think it has to be automated, unless they spend more time on this blog than Orrin. We found that they keep coming up with URLs that aren't in the blacklist, and we'll suddenly get a flood of tens or hundreds of spam comments. Clean them out, add the urls to the blacklist, and things may be quiet for a bit. Lately, we've been getting spammed with comments that don't even have urls, but make no sense...I don't get it.

Posted by: The Other Brother at December 3, 2004 12:30 PM

Last night the bastards used my main email address on a load they sent out, so this morning I wake up to hundreds of bounce messages waiting for me. The message is supposedly for "great mortage rates", but the only accessible link that works goes to a porn site. Is there that much correlation between the losers who'd go to anonymous and fraudlent loan sources and stick around for pr0n?

In only three years, it seems it's time to change email addresses again.

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 3, 2004 1:01 PM

I mentioned this in an above post, though it may go unnoticed there so I'll bring it up here:

On these full comment "archive" pages (as opposed to the old pop-up boxes), comment messages are often "invisible." I can see a big block of white space where the messages are supposed to be, but only when highlighting with the mouse does the text actually show up.

It's always been like this, but only now that these full pages are The Way Of The Judd is it a real problem.

I'm using IE6 on WinXP. Anybody else encounter this issue?

Posted by: Semolina Pilchard at December 3, 2004 1:32 PM

OK.

Guess I'm the only one who encounters this issue.

I'll just say, though, that it's not a single computer of mine; my PC at work (WinNT, IE6) gets the same effect.

Posted by: Semolina Pilchard at December 3, 2004 3:22 PM

Semolina,

I know there was an IE6 issue for some people for a while, but I thought I had resolved it. In the meantime, you might make sure you've performed all Windows updates, as that may change the behavior. Also, I've totally switched from IE to Firefox, and am very happy.

Posted by: The Other Brother at December 3, 2004 3:32 PM
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