10.10.08
Homeland Security Update
I hate spam!…as I am sure most of you do too. However, over the years it has become an annoyance which I have come to accept and realize that I am just going to have to deal with it. For those of you who are also blogers as well, you know how intrusive spam can feel when it is your own blog (not just your inbox) which is affected.
For the first few months of it’s existence, Midwesterner in the Middle Kingdom chugged on with just one or two spam comments per day. About four months into the endeavor, the penile enlargement vendors and mortgage brokers of the world came to the realization that my humble blog was an ideal vehicle to transmit their own messages. The spam picked up to the point where I was regularly receiving and deleting 20-30 spam comments per day. The pace gradually increased until this summer when I was having to remove a solid 100 spam comments per day, still annoying, but manageable. About a week ago, this number abruptly exploded to the point where I was pushing 500 per day, and moderating comments was becoming a serious drain on my spare time.
Now the real problem with all the spam is not just that it wastes my time. More importantly, during the process of moderating all of the comments (99.5% of which are typically spam) there is always the possibility that I may accidentally delete a legitimate comment. I am sure this has happened on several occasions. So to alleviate this problem I have implemented a plug-in which will now require you to enter a word from a graphic every time you leave a comment. This is to ensure that you are in fact you, and not a robot from Bahrain trying to solicit ‘male enhancement’ supplements.
Personally, I have always found these extra spam protection mechanisms to be quite annoying, and in cases when they have malfunctioned, they have precluded me from leaving comments on others’ blogs. So I want to go ahead and apologize (ironic I’m doing this on Yom Kippur, eh?) for any inconvenience or annoyance this causes to potential commenters. If anybody has any problems with the new system, please e-mail me at bensinchina at yahoo dot com to let me know. Likewise, if it seems to be working properly, leave a comment below to test it out. The last thing I want is for this extra splash of homeland security to prevent you from leaving your comments. To all those who are fasting (but apparently still using their computers), may you have a meaningful fast. To everybody else, enjoy your full three meals. By the way, I am curious if anybody knows of any endemic traditions of fasting (outside of the monastic order) in the Middle Kingdom? Whenever I have explained Yom Kippur to Chinese friends, they are baffled by the precept of not eating for an entire 24 hours.
Ji Village News
said,
October 10, 2008 at 3:47 am
Ben,
I wonder if you thought about WP-SpamFree plugin. It worked beautifully for me, so far as I can tell. I don’t have ANY spam messages that I need to clean or moderate, not a single one, and no passcode needed.
Of course I don’t know if it blocks any legitimate comments, but I have taken the chances and been happy so far.
Dim Summary
said,
October 10, 2008 at 5:46 am
I got the same reaction from Chinese friends: “It’s not healthy!” “Skipping a meal? That’s not good.”
I tried to explain that actually, to fast one or two days at a time once in a while is proven to be quite healthy, but they seemed to doubt still.
Turtlewind
said,
October 10, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I can’t think of any specifically Chinese tradition, but there are lots of muslims in China and at least some of them must observe Ramadan.
Swiss James
said,
October 13, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’m with Ji Village News- as soon as I installed WP Spam Free I went from 20+ spam comments a day to zero.
Occasionally I’ll have problems with false positives, but you just have to resend the comment and it works the second time.
In fact the plugin is so good I even donated a bumper 2 dollars to their paypal account, I presume the writers are living it up in Malibu Beach on my coin right now.
Jiang
said,
October 13, 2008 at 2:10 am
I appreciate your hard working on deleting so many spam to keep this blog alive.
Justin
said,
October 13, 2008 at 5:32 am
I highly suggest giving Bad Behavior a try. It requires no user intervention at all (i.e. no need to enter any anti-spam text) and for me was able to cut down the number of spam comments by like 99%.
I also use Register Plus for user registration spam.