Comment Spam

TPN is getting shitloads of comments spam lately. At the moment all of our comments pass through to the hosts to moderate but I'm thinking we might have to investigate alternative methods for dealing with it. Any recommendations? Do these "type in the number you see on your screen" systems work effectively?

Comments

[James Webster]

Its unclear what blogging software powers TPN, but if you are using Wordpress you might want to look into the Akismet plugin. TPN would probably need to buy a commercial license for the service however.

[William Luu]

I know you guys are using WordPress to power TPN, have you guys considered using the Akismet anti-spam plugin (http://akismet.com)?

I'm using it right now and it seems to be doing the trick with regards to spam. It'll catch the large majority of them. But once in awhile, a legit comment may get queued up as spam. Other than that, it's been working quite well on my blog.

[Cary]

If you're on WordPress I highly recommend Spam Karma 2...it's done freakin' wonders for stopping my comment spam.

http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/

[Tony]

I have not had one piece of comment on spam on any of the blogs on which I've installed WP Hashcash - http://elliottback.com/

[Rob Irwin]

Actually, William, if you look at the permalinks, etc, you'll see that Cam isn't on WordPress at all. He's on TypePad.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Hey Rob,
Cams on Typepad but TPN is Wordpress.
Molly

[Daniel]

I've been using WP-Hashcash for spam protection on Wordpress. Works a treat. Similar to a captcha (entering letters/numbers) but instead makes a Javascript call to ensure it's a person entering the comment, not a spambot.

[William Luu]

Rob, as Philip mentioned, TPN is using WordPress (which is what I thought we were discussing here, and not Cam's typepad blog).

[James]

If you don't want to pay for Akismet then wp-gatekeeper has been 100% successful for edublogs.org and gives you the option of asking really fun questions :)

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/wordpress/wp-gatekeeper.html

From extensive experience I hascash isn't secure enough and while Spam Karma is good it's still got holes... asking questions like "What's 3 plus 3?" is much more effective!

[Cameron Reilly]

Thanks guys! Yeah, TPN is on WP, which is what I'm interested in. I'll be moving this blog over to TPN in the near future as well anyway. I'll get Mano and his team to check out those solutions you've suggested. Cheers!

[Mike Seyfang]

And if you wanna be cwool and help improve the world - see if they can implement some of the sxore stuff from dick hardt and crew!

http://sxore.com/

Fang - Mike Seyfang - LearnDog

[MickH]

Thanks ppl for all the thoughts on spam filtering. Mano and I have put this issue on our priority list and will be dealing with it asap.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

On a slightly off topic, what program do you use to create the banners for the page?
TIA
Molly

[Cameron]

molly - photoshop