en zeker haa kleding Not letting them win
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Overnight the blog was overwhelmed by loads of spam, and I don’t know why the spam filter didn’t detect it all. I’ve removed it all now, but in response I’ve made a slight change to my commenting policy. Basically new commenters will have their first comment moderated by me before it will show up. I’m online a lot so it shouldn’t take more than a few hours or so to be approved.
If this proves unpopular or impractical I may opt for a captcha plugin, but I’d rather not as I hate using them on other blogs.
Let me know what you think.
Update: I’m trying something else, a system which should block the majority of spammers. So there’s now no excuse for anyone not to comment. 
7:05 pm on 10-Sep-08
Why not pick you half dozen favorite commenters and block the rest?
Did you fill in any online forms the day before the spam attack? Or forward a chain letter or similar? Spammers love that sort of thing.
9:42 pm on 10-Sep-08
Hi Nicholas: Nice idea… I never forward chain letters! Some other bloggers have reported similar problems, and I think the spammers have figured out a way to get past the spam filter that I use.
7:23 pm on 18-Feb-09
I totally understand on this spam issue: my bog had similar problems. First, I tried forcing people to register. They didn’t! Then I realised most of the spam came from “robots” so all I needed was a simple CAPTCHA device that ensured the form was being filled in by a human and not a robot. Result: no spam!
All the best!
2:53 pm on 19-Feb-09
Hi BM, I tried a captcha plugin ages ago but some visitors reported problems with it so I stopped. I’m using another plugin which blocks the robots directly, so it’s helped a lot without aggravating my readers too much.