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May 27, 2004
Comment spam in the post-MT era.
(What post-MT era?)
So I'm getting more and more comment spam, these days. That is, people leaving comments not because they have something to say, but because they have a link to post that they want Google to look favourably upon because a number of bloggers have linked to it.
At first, these comments came just occasionally, and I deleted them manually when I noticed them. Now I'm getting a few every day, and I use the rather nifty MT-Blacklist to pick them out and remove them. Sadly I can't use it to filter them at posting time, because it doesn't understand the threading hack, but it's a good removal tool all the same. Any URLs the spammers post that aren't already matched by the blacklist get added when I purge their comments, too, so next time they spam I can spot them more easily. Great. But still, the spam is sitting there looking ugly and being indexed by google for a few hours, or even a couple of days, before I notice it. So I'm closing entries for commenting as soon as they start getting spammed — the vermin seem to pick on particular entries, rather than spamming across the whole blog, so closing an entry once it starts attracting spam seems to keep a reasonable lid on the situation. Thankfully it seems to take a while for spammers to notice an entry and start attacking it, so this shouldn't interfere too badly with normal commenting — that said, if you have a genuine comment to post, please do email me about it, and I may even add it to the site manually if you want.
This still sucks. I don't want to have to close entries for commenting, be vigilant for new entries getting spammed, or go making people jump through hoops to comment on my blog. Thankfully, I have a feeling the end is in sight: most comment spam seems to be targetting blogs based on Movable Type which, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, recently fell from favour throughout the "blogosphere" following the release of version 3 and its new, clearer licensing scheme. So now, hopefully, at least one of the following will happen:
- More people will move to MT3, which uses authentication for comment posters, thus effectively killing off comment spam (although it's alleged that comment spammers are simply registering for TypeKey accouts and carrying on as before)
- More people will move away from MT altogether, to solutions such as WordPress, Drupal, and the expensive but oh-so-shiny ExpressionEngine.
Either of these means fewer people using MT2, which means there is less benefit to running an MT2-comment-spamming operation — either way, this has to mean less comment spam for me, right? The alternative is that with people moving away from MT2, those of us sticking with it will be a smaller group for the spammers to attack, and so each attract a larger share of the spam; if that happens, I might have reconsider my decision to stick with MT.
Oh, also, I have a new job for the summer, with BT Syntegra. I start on Tuesday. Woo, and yay.
This entry brought to you by the I've-not-posted-for-a-while-and-should-be-revising department.
Posted by James at 16:00
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May 14, 2004
Link splurge #5
Well, if the US one counts as 4. Anyway, one more time, with content...
- It wouldn't be fair not to mention Piers Morgan finally getting the boot, so there it goes. Much as the pictures were published in good faith, it soon became pretty clear they were fakes; he could have 'fessed up, and saved, but he didn't, so it was fairly inevitable that he'd go. Hey, I think I know a job he could apply for...
- Van Helsing in 15 minutes — I went to see this with Nicky a few nights back, and have remarkably little to say. It's not a great film, it's not a bad film, and it rips off just about every movie ever made. Oh and mmmm, corsets. What's not to like?
- The Independent has switched to only producing its so-called "compact edition" as of today, further blurring the distinction between tabloid and broadsheet. I'm confident this change of format won't affect the content, though; also, they claim that 90% of their sales were already of the compact edition, so for most people the change is something of a non-event. Compact edition FT, anyone?
- natrail.pl seems to be the latest and greatest usable way to get at train timetabling information. I'm surprised sites like thetrainline don't take notice of the existence of things like this, and Matthew Somerville's alternate rail information pages and wonder just why people feel the need to create usable alternatives to what should really be simple, pointy clicky systems...
- I'm sticking with Movable Type for the forseeable future, despite their surprising licensing announcement yesterday. I've read the predictions of impending doom, the criticisms, the accusations of money-grabbing, the accusations of abandonment, and nothing has moved me sufficiently that I'm willing to spend time investigating a new blogging system. Of course, I wasn't in any great rush to upgrade to MT3 either, so perhaps it's a non-issue. Maybe in 6 months when all my friends are using WordPress or drupal, and they have the same wealth of plugins and features as my current MT setup, I'll think again.
- Had anyone else completely forgotten about these Mars rovers?
- Oh, and the X-Prize just got considerably more interesting. Unlike this entry, which stops right here.
Posted by James at 23:00
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May 02, 2004
US Link Splurge
This is a special USA-based edition of an irregular feature around these parts.
- A scary del.icio.us-based blog
- A terrifying presidential candidate, and the fact people will actually support him
- The Constitution Party. Nuff said.
- Wow, voters are just spoilt for choice... (also, best domain name evah)
- Nice to see the gun-safety message made so clear!
- Welcome to 1984. Again
- Supreme Court Justice assaulted but not robbed, eh? (thanks to Edmund for seeding my initial paranoia here)
- And of course, the biggest news story from Iraq this week.
This may seem one sided. It is, and unfairly so. So, there's a comments link below; if you want to balance things up, please, go right ahead...
In other news, the #1 song in the UK and US charts when I was born was Down Under, by Men At Work. This site says so, at any rate.
Posted by James at 22:54
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