As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been getting more than my fair share of blogspam of late. I’ve been spending about twenty minutes every three or so days clearing out the ‘moderation’ queue and updating my keyword lists. Worse still, some spam has been getting through nonetheless (hopefully I’ve always been quick to remove it, and so none of you – my readers – have had to see any of it).
So: I’ve implemented a new anti-blogspam solution: whenever you post a comment to my weblog from now on you’ll be asked a simple question. The answer is usually obvious… to a human… but very difficult to automate a computer to answer. I appreciate any feedback on this (why not leave a comment to this post), and I’ll let you know whether it fixes the problem. And, of course, if it does, I’ll offer my code snippet back to the WordPress development team in order to include it, perhaps, with a future version: or, at least, offer it to friends of mine who use similar blog engines and are troubled by spam.
I need sleep.
In other (almost equally geeky) news, I’ve been spending a good deal of time working on my new RockMonkey WikiGame – TromaNightAdventure. If I can keep up a reasonable development rate on it this weekend (which could be tough – I’ve lots to do, and Gareth is visiting and keeps distracting me with cool technology like GPS devices and VoIP telephones), it’ll be ready on Tuesday evening. Watch this space.
Testing commentability…
Wow so simple even I can do it.
Checking to see if I’m human…
Just like all the other proles, here I come to test the sod…
That’s rather smart.
I’d very much appreciate the code as, immediately after posting, I always get two comments containing random words and links to gambling-type websites.
Is it simple enough that one only reasonably familiar with PHP could edit questions and answers?
Yes, you’re more than welcome to the code: I’ll sort you out with it when you get around to visiting Aber; or if you get can JTA to pass me your e-mail address, I’ll send it to you.
It’s quite simple, and will integrate seamlessly with WordPress (might require a little re-coding to work with something else, but that’s not so hard). All of the questions, their right answers, and the plausible wrong answers are stored in a text file, which is all you’re likely to need to edit.
just giving myself the Turing test by seeing if your new anti-blogspam test confuses me ;)
Anonymous,
This post is from 2004 and I don’t use the same anti-spam system any more.