Spam Storm
Folks, just want to let you know I’m getting about 30 automated spam comments an hour right now. They’re all getting caught by my comment moderation procedure, so you’re not seeing them, but the process for deleting them in bulk is cumbersome and prone to error. I fear I may accidentally have deleted (or failed to approve) a few legitimate comments over the last few days. If one of your comments has gone missing, that’s likely why; please understand that the culprit is the lousy internet weather just now.
How do I send you a funny spanking picture?
If you are using WordPress, I recommend you upgrade to WP 1.5.2 and install Spam Karma 2. I’m running it on one of my blogs, and I have had zero comment spams make it through even to “regular” moderation. Only two comments in the past two months have been accidentally labeled as spam. SK2 automatically puts spam comments in a separate queue and you don’t have to take any action; they delete automatically.
You might also consider a CAPTCHA plugin, by which your visitors have to put in a numeric code to post a comment.
J, since I posted this, I’ve done just as you suggested, and it seems to be working. Unfortunately, the author of Spam Karma II seems to be an arrogant bastard, because SK2 blatantly ignores the WordPress moderation settings. I need to moderate first-time comments for content no matter what SK2 thinks of them, but SK2 doesn’t allow that (the author says “this is a feature, not a bug”, hence my crack about arrogance.) So I may have to turn SK2 off after this particular spam storm passes.