From john at userfrenzy.com  Sat Mar  4 12:33:17 2006
From: john at userfrenzy.com (John Handelaar)
Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 18:33:17 +0000
Subject: [DesDev] WEO trackbacks
Message-ID: <4409DD6D.8010503@userfrenzy.com>



...are now disabled.

I received 2900 spam trackback notifications
in the last 90 minutes.  Time to discuss whether
we want them and if so, how to handle them.

On my own site (1)  I've started using Bad Behavior,
which rejects all malformed requests.  I've not seen
any spam for 3 days but my own site spam load was
rather lower than WEO's.



jh

[1]  http://handelaar.org

From martin at uckwa.org  Sat Mar  4 14:03:30 2006
From: martin at uckwa.org (Martin Burns)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 20:03:30 +0000
Subject: [DesDev] WEO trackbacks
In-Reply-To: <4409DD6D.8010503@userfrenzy.com>
References: <4409DD6D.8010503@userfrenzy.com>
Message-ID: <94FE4E68-277E-4227-82AE-04AD12B70C9C@uckwa.org>


On 4 Mar 2006, at 18:33, John Handelaar wrote:

> ...are now disabled.
>
> I received 2900 spam trackback notifications
> in the last 90 minutes.  Time to discuss whether
> we want them and if so, how to handle them.
>
> On my own site (1)  I've started using Bad Behavior,
> which rejects all malformed requests.  I've not seen
> any spam for 3 days but my own site spam load was
> rather lower than WEO's.

...and on mine(2), I have the up to date spam module that
1) blocks IPs after 3 attempts
2) auto-deletes spam trackbacks after an admin-defined time

The thing that so many spams makes difficult is spotting genuine
trackbacks amidst pages and pages of spam. We've had a few (and
I *mean* a few - 1 a week or less) genuine trackbacks, and some
of them have been pretty nice about us and the article. But I'm
not sure whether that's worth enough to put up with the spam.

And also, in the current theme, trackbacks look like poo ;-)

Cheers
Martin

(2) http://www.easyweb.co.uk/

--
 > Spammers: Send me email -> yumyum at easyweb.co.uk to train my filter
 > http://www.nuclearelephant.com/projects/dspam/
Sell Cloth Nappies from your website:
http://www.purpur.co.uk/announcing-purpur-associates



From paul at xk7.net  Sat Mar  4 17:15:21 2006
From: paul at xk7.net (Paul Waring)
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 23:15:21 +0000
Subject: [DesDev] WEO trackbacks
In-Reply-To: <4409DD6D.8010503@userfrenzy.com>
References: <4409DD6D.8010503@userfrenzy.com>
Message-ID: <20060304231521.GA53117@kryten.xk7.net>

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 06:33:17PM +0000, John Handelaar wrote:
> I received 2900 spam trackback notifications
> in the last 90 minutes.  Time to discuss whether
> we want them and if so, how to handle them.

If there's a way that we can get the notifications down to a reasonable
amount through some automated method (e.g. any containing over three
links are automatically deleted - I know that I've never had a
trackback/comment with more than two links on any of my sites that
didn't turn out to be spam) then I think trackbacks should stay
available. I find it's interesting and often useful to see what people
are saying about articles, especially if I've written them, as often
they'll give an alternative point of view that might illustrate
something that the article doesn't address/consider.

I also don't mind volunteering to clear out the trackback moderation
queue every so often if it's a matter of not enough people available to
help out.

Paul