We Apologize for any Inconvenience
Posted by James R. Rummel on August 31st, 2005 (All posts by James R. Rummel)
Those comment spammers, dontchya love ‘em? Steven den Beste tried to leave a comment earlier in the day, and his immortal prose was blocked by our MT Blacklist anti-spam utility. Seems that a spammer slipped a little something in the URL line which prevented anyone from using the letters “DE”. Clever of them.
Clever, and yet oh so annoying.
It’s fixed now, but I thought it would be a good idea if I stepped up to the podium and said a few words to our readers.
I’m not an admin here, and I don’t set policy. That means your comment might be deleted due to content and language that Jonathan or Lexington find offensive and there’s not anything I can do about it. (Not that I’d want to, since anything that pisses off Lex or Jonathan automatically pisses me off as well.) But keep in mind that I can get into the Blacklist and make changes. If anyone has any problems they can drop me a line at james_43202@yahoo.com and I’ll get right on it.
That is all. We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.
August 31st, 2005 at 5:44 am
Thank you. (And testing, to see if I can really post again.)
August 31st, 2005 at 7:57 am
I remain awed by those with sufficient technical savvy to quickly debug such annoyances.
More simply, I am too stupid to have fixed it, and would have had no recourse but to set fire to the server. First, though, I might have chanted over it, or swung beads, or sacrificed a small bird to the Almighty CPU. Failing that, fire.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:12 am
Just to be clear, I have never deleted anything except a very small number of comments to my OWN posts. Other bloggers on the Boyz are on their own and can make their own judgments.
The Anti-Spam utility has a mind of its own and sometimes prevents comments from going up due to the presence of seemingly innocuous phrases. I have had this problem myself. Unfortunately, we are surrounded by low-cost vandals and the precautions we have to take impose costs on all of us.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:35 am
Thanks, James and Steven! I didn’t have a clue about what was going on.
The blacklist blocks hundreds of spam comments here daily. When a spam comment gets through, I usually add its URL to the blacklist. Inevitably some of the terms I add to the blacklist block legitimate comments. And now it appears that spammers have learned how to make the blacklist even less effective.
I was planning to install a challenge/response, and this episode confirms that I should do that. Possible alternatives are to upgrade to the latest version of Movable Type, which I don’t want to do, or to WordPress, which I want to do but seems like a lot of work. Suggestions are appreciated.
August 31st, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Dear Readers,
never, Never, NEVER EVER respond to spam!
August 31st, 2005 at 4:04 pm
First, though, I might have chanted over it, or swung beads, or sacrificed a small bird to the Almighty CPU. Failing that, fire.
Fire is the great cleanser.
James