Serendipity Forums

Blogger and web developer Peter Kroener suggested an easy and accessible (!) method of spam prevention he also uses himself: Just ask a stupid question. If the question isn't answered right, the comment is classified spam.

He himself uses the self-referential "What is the given name of Franz Beckenbauer ?", but any question would probably do. The fact that this doesn't lock out users of text browsers and screen readers is a major plus for me.

A plugin that uses this would only need two parameters, the question and the answer. To read Kroener's original post regarding this proposal, visit http://www.peterkroener.de/spamschutz-leichtgemacht/ (german).

Hi!

There's a huge problem with that: The texts need to be localized properly, and once texts like that are committed to the codebase, it's very easy for spammers to gather general questions to those forms into their databases.

I agree it could be done easily, but I don't really see a way how this could work in mid to long term...

Regards,
Garvin

garvinhicking wrote:Hi!

There's a huge problem with that: The texts need to be localized properly, and once texts like that are committed to the codebase, it's very easy for spammers to gather general questions to those forms into their databases.

I agree it could be done easily, but I don't really see a way how this could work in mid to long term...

Simple, each blogger would choose their own questions.

garvinhicking wrote:The texts need to be localized properly, and once texts like that are committed to the codebase, it's very easy for spammers to gather general questions to those forms into their databases.

I know that's probably not a better solution, but how about adding a simple mathematical exercise instead? People could (maybe) configure the exact exercise using input fields for the numbers and a select box for the operator in the plugin options ..?

YL

yellowled wrote:I know that's probably not a better solution, but how about adding a simple mathematical exercise instead?

I don't think you got it. Computers do simple math very well.