Comments on: I HATE Comment Spam

by: Anonymous

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

Obi
I am Mr. Frank Obi from Sierra Leone. My country in very deep problems now. i need to get money out of an account in bank into your account in USofA. I have approxamitely $43 million US dollars. I need this to send to you so that it not fall into the wrong hands here in Sierra Leone. I am willing to offer you a percent, but first another matter. i need to send over my drop-dead gorgeous daughter to you first. She is 22 year old, 5′10″, brown eyes, hair and skin, she is most attractive and avaiable, and I trust you will take care of her with no nonsense. Now, as to the percent I am willing to offer you. I am willing to offer you 0.0000001%. That will leave you with approxamitely $4.30 US dollars. I hope this meet your criteria. Please my brother is this matter take care and taake deep consideration of this matter. I will need all your particulars: name, date of birth, bank numbers, social securty numbers, driver’s license number, copy of passport, wallet sized picture, and a $15 US dollar processing fee, made out in the form of a check to a one Frank Obi. Thank you for your kindness and may happiness and this new found prosperity shne on you.

Your dear Lad from Lagos,

Frank Obi

by: mark

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

I have found most of my comment spam comes from posts that I have trackbacked to other sites (i.e. the Beltway Traffic Jam) or posts that someone else has references on thir site. So, since this post is trackbacked, I suspect that you will be getting comment spam in the comments on a post about how much you hate comment spam. Heh.

by: Kathy K

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

The ‘close comments’ automatic programs around only work if you have a mySQL database. If you are on Berkeley database, you are out of luck and have to close them by hand.

One thing that seems to help some is changing the name of them mt-comments.cgi to something else (there’s a place in mt.cfg you have to uncomment). Just make sure, if you do that, that your templates all use “<$MTCGIPath$><$MTCommentScript$>”, rather than “<$MTCGIPath$>mt-comments.cgi”. And make sure you rebuild everything.

by: Outside the Beltway

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

Beltway Traffic Jam
Still telecommuting, although I did make a sojourn into the office today. The Tuesday linkage: David Pinto blogs Opening Day. Armed Liberal thinks electronic voting…

by: Charlie on the PA Turnpike

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

Thus begs the question:

which is better? To have a blog that has few (if any) comments,

or to have a blog that gets spammed?

(15 years ago you could have substituted ‘answering machine’ for ‘blog’)

by: Steven

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

I know how to do it for individual entries (and have, like the Tony Snow and Sultan of Brunei posts)–but I am unware of any universal way of so doing. Of course, I haven’t looked either.

by: Robert Tagorda

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

I agree. There’s a way to close the comments sections automatically on old entries, but for some reason, I haven’t been able to get it to work. Maybe you can.

by: Steven

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

I have it and it works, but I still get tons of it.

by: mark

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:59:59 +0000

I don’t have MT Blacklist (yet), and I get pleny of comment spam. I share your pain.