Procrastinet

Comment Spam = Stomach Cancer

filed under: Spam Art

Those of you who don't run blogs that are based on Movable Type 2.661 probably don't understand the bile that accompanies the term "comment spam."

Starting about three months ago, strange messages started showing up in my comments. Somebody named "Texas Hold'Em Online" seemed to have an urgent need to comment on several of my posts at once. Other usual suspects were "Cheap Viagra" and "Payday Loans!" When they came in at a trickle, these were minor nuisances.

Since then the volume has gone up, so that I open the Procrastinet control panel every morning to a dozen or two dozen spam comments. Some of them actually put random jokes in the "comment," which can be fun to read as I delete them, before linking to sites that are supposedly online gambling or pharmacy sites but which might also contain all kinds of spyware and other cybernasties. Every once in a while I'll get a rash of pr0n posts, mostly about inter-family relations of the illegal variety.

The problem is, the interface to delete comments in MT 2.661 is heinously cumbersome. A window on the front control panel shows the last 5 comments, by poster. To delete a comment, you have to click on it in the list to call it up in its own screen, click a button to delete it, click a button in a new small window to confirm that you want to delete it, and then wait while the system hems and haws and buzzes and pings. After all, it's being deleted off of the server I'm hosted on, which I think is in Seattle or somewhere equally exotic. This process has to be repeated with EVERY SINGLE COMMENT.

Which is a problem when, like this morning, I log on to find over 100 new comment spams. Sonsabitches. Took me more than an hour of on and off cleansing to get rid of them.

Worse, I've seen stories on the Movable Type forums about sites getting literally thousands of comment spams. The new versions of MT have much easier comment-handling interfaces (i.e., you can pull up a list of 20-100 comments, click "select all" and erase them all at once - duh, ya think?!) - but judging by what Brad DeLong seems to have gone through in his upgrade, I'm terrified of making the jump.

In the meantime, please join me in fervently wishing stomach cancer on those generating this shit.

UPDATE:

Okay, so I was wrong. One of the best-regarded anti-comment-spam tools is available to use in 2.661. I have NO idea how to download it and install it (boy a lot of bloggers must also be dedicated code jockeys) but I'm going to see if I can get my host to do it. See what happens when you stop whining and actually look into a solution for something?!

Posted by rjt at December 16, 2004 02:44 PM