[thelist] PHP comment spam

Paul Waring pwaring at gmail.com
Sat Dec 24 09:08:28 CST 2005


On 12/24/05, Matt Warden <mwarden at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyway, #1 would be easy for you to implement. You could also calculate
> a ratio of how much of the comment is linked text and how much is
> unlinked text. I don't think you can get by without using a moderation
> queue.

I effectively have a moderation queue anyway - comments all have a
status, which is either approved or not - any that were above a
certain threshold wouldn't be added to the database at all, and any
that looked suspicious would be marked as such and wouldn't show up on
the site until manually approved. I think it's more the content of
comments that count, although most of the spam ones also have links
(I'm wary of using this as a filter though, as sometimes people will
post one or two valid links in their comments).

> Your other option is to use CAPTCHA (the type-what-you-see-in-the-image
> stuff), which will probably hold of spam robots for quite a while. You
> just have to make sure you get a CAPTCHA system that produces images
> that your human users can read (sometimes CAPTCHA systems generate
> random disfigurements and make it impossible to read by both human and
> computer).

I really don't want to implement CAPTCHAs, they're a right pain and I
*hate* filling them in, plus one of my friends uses a screen reader so
he wouldn't be able to comment on my blog if I implented any form of
visual confirmation.

Paul

--
Rogue Tory
http://www.roguetory.org.uk



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