Comments on: WP Spaminator can Bite Me

By: Malliobiana

Malliobiana — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:40:58 +0000

Spam blockers remind me of teachers who uses to criticize me for laying my head down on my desk and closing my eyes. I was working on concepts for original essays. They assumed I was wasting my time. They were wasting my time. I suspect this will be considered spam.

By: Dougal Campbell

Dougal Campbell — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:46:40 +0000

Interestingly enough, though, your pingback made it through.

Between my own huge-ass gray/black lists of spam words, Akismet, and SpamValve, the vast majority of the spam targetted at my site ends up flagged as spam. A tiny few occassionally get flagged for moderation. And it’s exceedingly rare for any of it to actually run the gauntlet and appear publicly.

By: Michael Heilemann

Michael Heilemann — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 09:11:30 +0000

I’m sorry to say that both Spaminator and Spam Karma 2 failed on BB. Akismet however works _great_, and I highly recommend it.

By: Roy

Roy — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 06:43:07 +0000

I used Spaminator for almost a year. Kitty, who is the author of Spaminator, seems to have disappeared from the blogsphere altogether. No activity as far as I can gather. She was put off by the WP1.5 incompatibility with her plug-in/s and switched to Drupal (dormant for many, many months).

In due time, Spaminator began to kill genuine comments — at least ones I was informed about. At times I was using CAPTCHA, but wasn’t sure to what extent it helped. I then decided to experiment with CAPTCHA. When disabled, dozens/hundreds of spammy comments flowed in every day. Many were stacked in the moderation queue because they contained or matched obvious spam characteristics. At some stage, I began to see comments that contained links, but did not bother with anchor text. P0ker sites would post names of songs and artists. When I enabled CPATCHA (in two serpate domains), the number of spammy comments verged 0. I hope it carries on this way. As far as I can recall, this CAPTCHA implementation is weak and was sensitive to floods a few months back.

I use Coffelius’ plug-in which I initially installed last year, but disabled at times because CAPTCHA’s have their problems too.

http://coffelius.ara[...]ndex.php?p=9

Hope this helps.

By: Geof F. Morris

Geof F. Morris — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 04:25:23 +0000

This is why I like how Spam Karma 2 works now: after analyzing the request [looking for an encrypted payload in the comment form that an automated spammer isn't going to pass along, doing a user-login check, and, newest of all, a check for Javascript capability in the browser---chances are that the user will have JS working and a spammer won't!], then and only then does it do any filtering based on the comment [IP checking, content checking, looking for lots of URLs in the text, etc.]. If the karma’s not terribly low in the threshhold, but not high enough to post, SK2 then presents a user with a captcha to validate that a human is posting.

Yes, it seems a bit much, but I find that the only spammers who seem to get through anymore are those who’ve radically changed tactics or are spamming by hand, and the only person who seems to get caught with any regularlity is my father, whose browser doesn’t use JS but who successfully fills out the captcha every time.

Now, you may not want to use it, Alex, but I’ve had great success. [YMMV!]

By: matt

matt — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 04:23:07 +0000

I guess it is time I address the issue and find a work around or a new spam blocker.

Try: Akismet or Spam Karma 2

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:34:59 +0000

Sorry about the spam blocker. I feel your frustration because the stupid thing is so inconsistent! I have found that it only accepts names that are 5 characters or more. So if you only had typed your first name, it may have rejected you for that reason. It is not something that I have paid much attention to yet because comments on the blog are few. I guess it is time I address the issue and find a work around or a new spam blocker.