Despite our best efforts (including a Captcha system) to curb comment spam from dirtying up our clients’ blogs, every now and then some is still getting through. We think the problem might be that some of it’s manually entered, which would be virtually impossible to stop without a comment approval process. Ok, so just ban the IP right? That works and is being implemented; however it’s not a bulletproof fix. It’s like marking emails as junk…or creating message filters. Somehow, like the female dinosaurs of Jurassic Park island, the spam finds a way to continue as a species. “Free Valium” mutates into “FR ee VaLLivm”. Samual L. Jackson clicks on it and gets eaten. It’s ugly.
A possible solution:
We’ll let people who are logged in (members and staff) comment the same way they always have. Everyone else goes through an approval loop. We thought about making people register to post a comment, but we thought that might discourage random visitors (non-members) from participating.
Is it the* solution? No, because approving comments and waiting for approval slows down the discussion. But each iteration brings us closer to spam-free blogging. And that’s what’s most important.
Naturally, suggestions or comments are welcome.
*edit: Bloglines doesn’t know how to italicize this for some reason. Strange.
