Weblog comments (was: Re: New Free Software related books for friends)

[MJ Ray]

David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/12/1 Matthias Kirschner <mk at fsfe.org>:
> > I approved your comment now. Do you know a better solution for avoiding
> > spam in the comments? I enabled it after I recevied about 15 e-mails a
> > day with Wordpress Blog comment spam.

That's not so many, but still too much.

I like the look of NoSpamNX but I've not got it working reliably
on multi-blog sites.  I use sitewide moderation and sitewide
blacklist plugins, but I can't find their homepage just now.  If
I don't find it soon, I'll put them on our co-op's site.

The main problems with SK2 are that it not only fails accessibility,
it fails reliability, giving commenters no indication whether or not
their eyetest-failed comment has passed or been rejected or whatever.
It's also reportedly fairly easy for spammers to pass the eyewatering
red/black reading test.

> I find moderation plus Akismet does the job really nicely on my
> Wordpress blogs. Akismet is a distributed spam-spotting service, so

Last I saw, Akismet had a commercial use restriction.
blogspam.net is a completely-free similar service.
TypePadAntispam has a free software plugin but a closed server.

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  Webmaster and LMS developer at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op