Spam filter
I’m using a new spam filter on this site and it has blocked some legitimate comments. Two were from Delmer and one was from Bob.
The spam tool is Defensio and I tried it because Spam Karma and Akismet were holding too many comments in moderation, and they were all duds.
It’s a fine line: hold spam comments for review or block good comments for review. I was hoping that Defensio would clear Delmer after I approved his first comment, but that didn’t happen.
I’m not surprised or concerned that Bob’s political throwaway comment was blocked. He gave his email address as bobhawk@google.com and a search engine for his web address. That took guts; he must be proud of himself.
WordPress spam prevention
Everyone hates spam, except I suppose the spammers themselves. I’ve had trouble with spam for years but I finally seem to be winning the battle.
My first layer of protection on this WordPress site is Akismet. When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to the site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.
When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case I want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it.
It has been known for Akismet to make false identifications. I used to scan the captured spam to check and as the numbers skyrocketed this became rather cumbersome. Read more
It’s only a game
Cricket is more than a game. It’s ingrained into the lives of many people and forms part of the culture and national character of those countries where it is played.
Passions run deepest in the subcontinent, where conflicting reactions to recent results illustrate the point. These extracts are from tvnz.co.nz:
Firstly, Pakistan’s shock loss to Ireland:
Angry Pakistani cricket fans took to the streets in protest and burned effigies of players on Sunday, hours after the side’s shock defeat to Ireland in the Caribbean put the 1992 champions out of the World Cup. Protesters held a mock burial of the team and the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in Hyderabad city, while posters and effigies of captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and coach Bob Woolmer were burnt in the central city of Multan.
And Bangladesh’s surprise victory over India:
Thousands of elated fans poured onto the streets of the capital on Monday morning to celebrate Bangladesh’s shock five-wicket victory over India in their opening World Cup Group B match at Port of Spain in Trinidad. Flag-waving students from the sprawling campus of the Dhaka University danced and sang in jubilation as others chanted “Bangladesh Bangladesh.”
In the fall-out from Pakistan’s defeat the captain Inzamam-ul-Haq has quit and the coach Bob Woolmer is dead. It would be trite to say the game should be kept in perspective because for people like Inzamam and Woolmer the game was their life.
Bad behaviour
I installed the Wordpress Bad Behaviour plugin a few days ago. It “complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place”.
Sure enough, in just three days it has blocked 2680 access accounts and climbing. The Akismet spam counter on this site shows 27,525 spam comments have been blocked. I used to clear several hundred spam posts every few days but thanks to the Bad Behaviour I only had to delete 34 today.
This site has been running since 2003 and it’s thoroughly indexed by Google and Yahoo. Unfortunately spam nasties have also come to know it well. The combination of Akismet and Bad Behaviour may have stumped them.
One side issue with Bad Behaviour is that it can potentially block legitimate visitors. If anyone has that problem they should email me: mgorey at inbox.com
Recent comments
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