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1.5 and sp-m

16

(No, this is not a post concerning the sp-m-proofness of WP 1.5.)

Updated to WP 1.5 today. It’s good stuff. That’s all, really.

Then, just half an hour ago, the sp-mmers started again. I fucking hate them. Can someone please, please shoot them? This is just… Aaargh!

To start a bit of discussion and to see if the comments still work now I have both the Sp-minator and Sp-m Karma enabled: would you mind a forced comment preview, a la the validatienazi? And while we’re at it, should I resort to Pingback to handle the inbound links stuff? Trackback sp-m is killing me. Please do share.

Posted on 2005-02-15 during the good parts of the evening.

16 comments

  1. Simon Jessey 2005-02-15 #1

    I have always forced a comment preview on the si-blog. I still get comment sp-m from time to time, but it is a trivial amount (thus far). Of course, my weblog is hand-rolled; therefore, I am not a target for sp-m bots. I don’t have Trackback of Pingback on my system.

    What kills me is referral sp-m. I’ve tried mod_rewriting my ass off, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Bastards.

  2. Simon Jessey 2005-02-15 #2

    You see! That is why you need comment previewing. Now you’re going to have to manually edit all the fake email links I just created in my last comment.

  3. Rob 2005-02-16 #3

    Har fucking har, my good sir Jessey.

    Referral spam is so frikken’ pathetic. All those Russian pr0n models, looking for a young hot Dutch web developer by sending him tons of referrals... sigh

    And though I’ve almost made my decision, I’d still love to hear from people if the comment preview would be a PITA.

  4. Hayo Bethlehem 2005-02-16 #4

    Just do the comment preview thing. It’ll be a happier world.

  5. Markus 2005-02-16 #5

    Hopefully this gonna work or I will have to email-terrorize you again. :P

  6. Mathias Bynens 2005-02-16 #6

    A comment preview would certainly not be a PITA, though it would take us a couple of extra clicks to get our comment posted... However, I won’t mind if it sets the Zooiblog free :)

  7. Hanni 2005-02-16 #7

    If it’s the way you gotta go then I’m sure we can all put up with the comment preview.

  8. John Oxton 2005-02-16 #8

    I hear Eric Meyer just released something called Gatekeeper?

  9. Anne 2005-02-16 #9

    You know you are a wanabee-validatienazi. For starters, I would say you start using forced preview. Making your visitors enter valid markup (according to your rules) might be a (too) big step for you and your visitors.

  10. Mathias Bynens 2005-02-16 #10

    You know you are a wanabee-validatienazi.

    Aren’t we all?

    For starters, I would say you start using forced preview.

    Hmmm... I don’t know, Anne. Contrary to you, Rob doesn’t exclusively blog about web standards & design etc. So I guess it would make sense if I said some of his visitors still use IE and don’t even know what the fuck HTML stands for. Should those people be forced to push the preview button too? It appears to me certain comments would be lost because of people like that, thinking they submit their data when they’re only previewing it...

  11. Rob 2005-02-16 #11

    Contrary to you, Rob doesn’t exclusively blog about web standards & design etc. So I guess it would make sense if I said some of his visitors still use IE and don’t even know what the fuck HTML stands for. Should those people be forced to push the preview button too? It appears to me certain comments would be lost because of people like that, thinking they submit their data when they’re only previewing it…

    Mathias, your concern for my visitors is heart warming ;) But here are my thoughts: forced preview is the best way for any admin to prevent comment spam. It just depends on your visitors. Now, that’s where Mathias’s stance comes in: I asked about IE once or twice, and most (99%) of my contributing visitors use anything but IE. I will not be asking valid XHTML, as my comments get corrected pretty well. I’m thinking of hacking it up so the commentator won’t notice the refining. But that’s for after the redesign.

    And I catch your drift there. I shall add a notice that they are in fact just going to see a preview because of spammers and validity and that the real submission comes from the preview page.

  12. Indranil 2005-02-17 #12

    A simpler solution, you ask? A simpler solution, I deliver. Just add another field, “2+3=” or image identification. No more long page loads, no more nothing, no more spammers.

  13. Joen 2005-02-17 #13

    It sucks so much! I’ve also been hit by a wave of spam that started this morning with a single trackback that went through. After that, I simply enabled the spaminator, and everything has been caught.

    The good thing is, the tools are working.

    The bad thing is, the spammers are seemingly tireless!

    However, adding forced previews, captchas and all that, seems to me like throwing in the towel.

    Is any of the spam coming through your defences? Is it really necessary? Or is it just a nuisance?

  14. Rob 2005-02-17 #14

    Joen, I don’t see it like throwing in the towel. It’s another way of preventing the shit, and I like it because it will strain my server less.

    It’s not coming through, but the spam itself isn’t the real problem at this moment. Yes, of course. It’s more than a nuisance, but c’mon, I don’t want false positives, and I had like 6 of them before the upgrade. That really bugs me. And even if they had an undelete option, it would still take me too much time to dig through the rubbish (right now, it’s all H1-70links-spamwords spam, so it gets caught, but when you notice Gmail’s threading maximum (61 people), it’s troublesome). I guess my net amount of spams attempted is at about 1500.

  15. Ryan 2005-02-18 #15

    Maybe I should start using IE...

    Just out of spite..

    -Ryan

  16. Joen 2005-02-18 #16

    Joen, I don’t see it like throwing in the towel. It’s another way of preventing the shit, and I like it because it will strain my server less.

    By throwing in the towel, I mean sacrificing usability in the fight against spam. With that said, I didn’t have any problems posting the last time, so it’s not as bad.

    Captcha, just as an example, is bad.

    IMHO, the new “automatic whitelisting” in WP 1.5 is bad: new commenters won’t know what the hell is going on when their comment doesn’t show up the first time.

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