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Blocking comment spam: A new approach?

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:07 am
by yellowled
Hey everyone,

I saw a pretty simple, yet still amazing and in my humble opinion quite effective means to deal with comment spam the other day.

The blog in question (http://snookerblog.de; it's in German) is powered by Textpattern, and it's commentform disables the send button unless the user has clicked preview first. I don't know how they do that, but I think it's pretty effective against bot-generated comment spam - or is there something I don't see? Bots can't click buttons, right? :)

Do we have something like this? I don't think so. I also think it's a great way to deal with comment spam without wasting any kind of ressource like blacklists or askimet. However, it can be quite a hassle for users ... so what do you think about this? (No, I can't write a plugin for this myself. Still. :))

YL

Re: Blocking comment spam: A new approach?

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:38 am
by garvinhicking
Hi!
Bots can't click buttons, right? :)
They don't, but they could easily.

Currently this mechanism is nice, but just like any other honeypot, it can be curcimvented easily. If enoough blogs use it, the bots will be adapted. So I find programming these means in first instance as quite wasted time.

Enabling the "Use CSRF-protection" antispam method should serve virtually the same effect.

Best regards,
Garvin