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  • January 10, 2010 at 10:19 AM #16891
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    OK, having woken up this morning to like 50 new spam comments I had to deal with, I decided to take another stab at installing a spam blocking module. The last attempt didn’t work so well as the module was quite buggy. This time I have installed a 3rd party service called Mollom.

    The way it works is that they host a database of spam characteristics and they test against this database every time someone posts a comment. If it’s obvious spam it is blocked; if it’s obvious non-spam it goes through; but if it’s a “maybe” they present a captcha (funny looking letters you have to identify) to verify that it’s a human and not a script typing it in.

    My hope is that this will block most of the spam while having little to no impact on legit users.

    If you have any troubles, please email me at [email protected] . (Emailing is far better than posting comment or thread about it, because I might not see that).

    Rich

    UPDATE The spam blocking system learns from examples so hopefully will get better over time. In the meantime, if it hassles you, I apologize but hopefully that will stop as it learns you are a one of the good guys. Also in the meantime, if it does let some spam through, please let me know so I can delete it and help the system learn spam profiles.

    I still see people addressing comments to an imagined team of site moderators that carefully reads every thread. It’s just me, folks, and I probably read fewer than half the threads. So again,

    If you need to contact me about a site administration issue, don’t leave a message for me in the comments: instead please email me at [email protected].

    Thanks!

    January 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM #500775
    Oxford
    Participant

    Good luck with that. I will take a while before Mollom determines a “reputation” of our members comments. Eventually, the Captchas will lessen.

    You can override the SPAM text on the Captctcha screen to make it insinuating here.

    http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides

    OX
    …hoping this post gets through

    January 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM #501659
    Oxford
    Participant

    Good luck with that. I will take a while before Mollom determines a “reputation” of our members comments. Eventually, the Captchas will lessen.

    You can override the SPAM text on the Captctcha screen to make it insinuating here.

    http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides

    OX
    …hoping this post gets through

    January 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM #500926
    Oxford
    Participant

    Good luck with that. I will take a while before Mollom determines a “reputation” of our members comments. Eventually, the Captchas will lessen.

    You can override the SPAM text on the Captctcha screen to make it insinuating here.

    http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides

    OX
    …hoping this post gets through

    January 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM #501413
    Oxford
    Participant

    Good luck with that. I will take a while before Mollom determines a “reputation” of our members comments. Eventually, the Captchas will lessen.

    You can override the SPAM text on the Captctcha screen to make it insinuating here.

    http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides

    OX
    …hoping this post gets through

    January 10, 2010 at 3:00 PM #501318
    Oxford
    Participant

    Good luck with that. I will take a while before Mollom determines a “reputation” of our members comments. Eventually, the Captchas will lessen.

    You can override the SPAM text on the Captctcha screen to make it insinuating here.

    http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides

    OX
    …hoping this post gets through

    January 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM #501678
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    Thanks OX… sounds like you are a lot more experienced at Drupal than I am, if you are overriding the translation filter to make things naughtier. Great tip on the stringoverrides module, though I am not sure there is a need to change the message on the captcha screen (or is there? Let me know if you think so).

    Thanks!
    Rich

    January 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM #501433
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    Thanks OX… sounds like you are a lot more experienced at Drupal than I am, if you are overriding the translation filter to make things naughtier. Great tip on the stringoverrides module, though I am not sure there is a need to change the message on the captcha screen (or is there? Let me know if you think so).

    Thanks!
    Rich

    January 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM #501338
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    Thanks OX… sounds like you are a lot more experienced at Drupal than I am, if you are overriding the translation filter to make things naughtier. Great tip on the stringoverrides module, though I am not sure there is a need to change the message on the captcha screen (or is there? Let me know if you think so).

    Thanks!
    Rich

    January 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM #500946
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    Thanks OX… sounds like you are a lot more experienced at Drupal than I am, if you are overriding the translation filter to make things naughtier. Great tip on the stringoverrides module, though I am not sure there is a need to change the message on the captcha screen (or is there? Let me know if you think so).

    Thanks!
    Rich

    January 10, 2010 at 3:22 PM #500795
    Rich Toscano
    Keymaster

    Thanks OX… sounds like you are a lot more experienced at Drupal than I am, if you are overriding the translation filter to make things naughtier. Great tip on the stringoverrides module, though I am not sure there is a need to change the message on the captcha screen (or is there? Let me know if you think so).

    Thanks!
    Rich

    January 10, 2010 at 4:03 PM #500976
    Oxford
    Participant

    Rich I was the ADMIN guy for a 50k member archery web forum for five years. It was powered by vBulletin (Jelsoft). I learned alot about the spammers and found some creative ways to shut them down. Too bad you cannot migrate to that platform. It is a true forum with tons of cool tools and not a modified blog like this one.

    I don’t know as much about Drupal but those spam plugins look interesting. I tested the filters with some obvious spam and it blocked me. Seems to be working. Good luck

    Ox
    …nerd

    January 10, 2010 at 4:03 PM #501368
    Oxford
    Participant

    Rich I was the ADMIN guy for a 50k member archery web forum for five years. It was powered by vBulletin (Jelsoft). I learned alot about the spammers and found some creative ways to shut them down. Too bad you cannot migrate to that platform. It is a true forum with tons of cool tools and not a modified blog like this one.

    I don’t know as much about Drupal but those spam plugins look interesting. I tested the filters with some obvious spam and it blocked me. Seems to be working. Good luck

    Ox
    …nerd

    January 10, 2010 at 4:03 PM #501463
    Oxford
    Participant

    Rich I was the ADMIN guy for a 50k member archery web forum for five years. It was powered by vBulletin (Jelsoft). I learned alot about the spammers and found some creative ways to shut them down. Too bad you cannot migrate to that platform. It is a true forum with tons of cool tools and not a modified blog like this one.

    I don’t know as much about Drupal but those spam plugins look interesting. I tested the filters with some obvious spam and it blocked me. Seems to be working. Good luck

    Ox
    …nerd

    January 10, 2010 at 4:03 PM #501707
    Oxford
    Participant

    Rich I was the ADMIN guy for a 50k member archery web forum for five years. It was powered by vBulletin (Jelsoft). I learned alot about the spammers and found some creative ways to shut them down. Too bad you cannot migrate to that platform. It is a true forum with tons of cool tools and not a modified blog like this one.

    I don’t know as much about Drupal but those spam plugins look interesting. I tested the filters with some obvious spam and it blocked me. Seems to be working. Good luck

    Ox
    …nerd

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