drivelocity.com » spam

I’m Done With WordPress MU

drivelocity — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:33:57 +0000

I think I’ve used WordPress MU (multi-user) longer than I’ve used regular WordPress, but my use of MU (on another site) is at an end. I’ve finally had enough of dealing with sploggers. Actually, I simply can’t keep up with them. And, I don’t want to try. By their winning, everyone lost. They were finally provided a place to spam that I couldn’t control, until now. All of their spam is gone and I will likely restart the site anew with a simple WordPress installation and see if I can get some of the legitimate bloggers back as authors of the new blog.

I’m not sure how MU admins do it, unless they have a staff to sit and moderate every account 24/7. Oh well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

Do Bloggers Need a Solid Comment Policy?

drivelocity — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:58:35 +0000

Since posting about using Akismet and the need to check your spam queue, I’ve found that all comments in response have been found in my Akismet spam queue. I think it’s quite indicative of the types of sites the visitors linked to in their comments and the keywords used in the names they provided. What are we, as contentious bloggers, to do?

One option is to implement a comment policy that clearly states that comments where keywords are used in names, or links provided to certain sites will not be approved. While this is a sure-fire way to curb the spam that gets through, I have no doubt that it will also adversely affect the level of activity that I have come to appreciate.

The other option is to do nothing, allow all decent comments through, because people may be willing to provide a quality response, but want something in return. Since I already use the dofollow, CommentLuv and Top Commentators plugins, I am not opposed to providing incentive for visitors to contribute.

While I believe the most effective tool against spam is moderation, some sites like BlogHerald.com do not use it and have a comment policy similar to my own existing spam prevention philosophy where comments are censored or deleted if they are abusive, off-topic, contain ad-hominem attacks, promote hate of any kind, use excessive foul language, or is blatantly spam.

As expected, ProBlogger.com has a comment policy, but seems to be much less formal. It’s more of a narrative response than an outline of what’s acceptable, or not.

The AriWriter.com policy is similar (some parts are identical) to that of BlogHerald.com, but takes it a couple steps further by disallowing the use of handles and adding a legal disclaimer.

So, those are the obvious options, but what else can possibly be done? What does a fair yet effective comment policy allow? Or, am I overthinking this?

Use Akismet? Check Your Spam Queue!

drivelocity — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:18:58 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, the Akismet plugin for WordPress can be a life saver! But, as I’ve come to find recently, you still need to check your spam queue for false positives. I just finished going through 11 pages of comments marked as spam and found eight comments that actually contribute something to the discussion, or ask valid questions.

On the other hand, there is still quite a bit of spam getting past Akismet that I have to manually mark as spam. So, while it can save me some time and effort on the front side, I’m finding myself spending more time later wading through pages and pages of comments, rather than on a flow basis.

I’ve found one thing about being a decent blogger, is the importance of acknowledging and responding to every comment that you can. What’s to keep someone coming back if they’re just going to be ignored. I fear that because I wasn’t able to immediately approve and respond to comments marked as spam, I may have lost some visitors.

What is your experience with Akismet? How do you deal with spam and false positives?

Thank you Akismet!

drivelocity — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:09:05 +0000

Starting on January 12, 2009, another blog I run came under severe spam attack and it has been increasing since. Until that point it had received maybe a couple dozen spam comments, at the most. On January 12, 2009, it jumped up to 217, then to 361 on the 13th, and 409 already today!

Thanks to the Akismet plugin for WordPress, only one spam comment made it through to the queue. Akismet has successfully blocked over 1,300 pieces of spam in the past month. Take a look at these stats!

Looking into this further, I found that much of this spam was comming from 83.233.30.32, which is located in Sweden based on the WHOIS search I did on that IP address. I also contacted the two abuse email addresses on file. I’ll post an update if I get a response.

So, consider this a heads up – make sure you have Akismet installed. It’s easy to set up and to get a key, you only need to register on WordPress.com. Once you register, check your profile and copy/paste the key into the Akismet Configuration page.

Also, you may want to add 83.233.30.32 to your IP Deny Manager if you use cPanel, or whatever ban list your host provides. While I was at it, I banned the 194.8.75.* range as some of the spam was coming from there as well, but not nearly as much…