Word Verification

Forum Rules

Helios_Multi TPoxygen11final

[leechbabe]

So I've been getting lots of spam comments of late and decided to do something about it.

My choices (in my blogger blog) seemed to be

A) Comment Moderation

or

B) Word Verification

Now it seems to me that in

A) I do the hard work of making sure there is no spam in my blog

or

B) my blogging friends who want to leave a comment do the hard work to make sure there is no spam in my blog.

So I chose A) comment moderation, because it is my blog so I should do the hard work to keep it spam free not my commentors, many of whom are time poor.

Plus I just loathe those word verification things with a passion close to my love of chocolate.

Didn't occur to me that others might also share my dislike of word verification until I read a comment by Lightening in my Smiley Saturday post.

So I ask...

Which do you dislike more - comment moderation or word verification?

Do either of these two things stop you from commenting at a blog?

Why does World of Warcraft love to spam me so? What did I ever do to it? (well apart from not getting addicted to WoW like most of the rest of the world?)

What chance is there that the chocolate fairy might visit my house tonight and leave a nice big block of Cadbury fruit and nut?

[Lani]

Word verification: Loathsome
Comment moderation: Mildly irritating occasionally, but understood.

I think that if it's necessary to moderate comments, having it set up so that once regular commenters are approved they don't go into the mod queue is good but I don't know if Blogger does that. 

One of the reasons that I like to see my comment posted is to make sure I haven't made any errors.  Blogs which allow me to fix typos after posting rock.  The next best thing is blogs that have a preview function so I can proofread my comment as it will appear.

[leechbabe]

I've yet to see any option in blogger to let regular commenters through without moderation.

[Kelley]

neither will stop me from commenting on a blog, only open ID only option will.

I would rather the spam word than moderation, only because my ego likes to see that my comment has posted and I am too busy/lazy/forgetful to go back and check.

[Lani]

I finally caved on Open ID.  it was either that or never comment on a Blogger blog again. I can almost deal with CAPTCHA when it's obvious what I'm supposed to type, but usually on Blogger I have to enter the darn thing 3 times.  Loathsome.

[Snoskred]

I hate word verification. With a passion.

And of course cos Google does stuff so well, I often have to type it in three times even though I KNOW I got the letters right.

Death to Blogger Word Verification.

Word!  :rshocked:

[Lightening]

I have been having a LOT of trouble lately with word verification.  To the extent that many blogs with word verification I've had to give up on posting my comment.  I attempt it 3 times and then give up.  Although the other day I did give it a 4th go on a blog I REALLY wanted to leave a comment on (can't even remember why now).

Blogger seems to go in fits and starts. For a while the word verification thing will work properly and then it'll play up and I can't seem to comment on any blogger blogs easily.  *sigh*

I've not seen any blogger blogs that only allow open ID now though.  It seems it's either they don't allow anonymous comments (which personally I find strange but anyway....) OR they have the full list which includes being able to type in your URL.

That's strange that you're having so much trouble with spam leechbabe.  I've never had much spam come through on my blogger blogs.

Well, obviously you already know MY stance on word verification vs comment moderation.   

[fern]

word verifictaion puts me off posting, maybe I'm just lazy though I hate trying to work out some akward kaptcha and typing it in wrong three times.

Comment modding, slightly annoying, but not enough to put me off at all.

[Ben Barden]

I think that if the verification is good, it's better than moderation.  Thanks to Lightening's feedback I ditched reCAPTCHA and wrote my own CAPTCHA, which should be easier to decipher.  I also allow people to log in if they want to avoid the CAPTCHA.  I know most people would rather not log in but I do provide other benefits for those who do, such as avatars, edit comments, and edit profile / site URL.

I don't like moderation because it requires manual effort on my part.  Yes, it's my site and it's my responsibility to stop spam, but some days I block a few hundred spam comments simply by having the CAPTCHA.  That's a lot I'd have to reject via moderation and also a lot of database activity due to all the adding/deleting that would go on.

In an ideal world we wouldn't need a CAPTCHA or moderation, but in an ideal world we wouldn't have spam, and unfortunately we do.  I prefer the CAPTCHA because prevention is better than cure.

[Snoskred]

You may want to look at the Tan Tan Noodles spam filter plugin - it tells me - So far, this spam filter has blocked and rejected 27204 spam comments.

I wrote about it on my plugin page -

I am seriously crazy about this plugin but The Other Half has modified it slightly so that it works better. The original version looks for certain patterns which are present in a lot of spam emails and it also allows you to put in words often used by spammers to make sure those words don’t get past the plugin again.

The spammers are always changing their methods in order to get their spam past filters like this. I noticed they were using a lot of different mis-spellings for common drugs but the actual URL to their site was always spelt correctly. The plugin did not seem to check URL’s for the often used words. So the other half modified the plugin so that words put in will be rejected whether they are in the comment itself or the URL entered by the spam bot. This means all the drug spam is automatically rejected now. I’ll have to get the other half to write a post on how to modify it sometime.

Between moving to Wordpress on October the 9th and writing this on the 20th of November, TanTan has blocked 3631 spam comments. Because it blocks them before Wordpress has to deal with them, this has saved a lot of load on my blog. Joe Tan explains a bit more about saving CPU cycles and load on the home page of this plugin, seen below.

TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filter

The Other Half has three weeks off - I will ask him to put the modified version somewhere and an explanation of how it works somewhere so people can grab it if they want to.

[Anonymum]

Word verification has got to be THE most annoying thing in the world. I hate it with a passion. A couple of blogs I read have it, and I'll be honest, I only go a couple of times a week, as opposed to those I visit daily. It doesn't stop me reading altogether, but I have to be in the mood to fight with it.
I'd rather see "your comment is awaiting moderation" than a verification screen.

Edited to address issue of the user not being able to spell!

[Lee]

I used to have word verification on my site with the question who is Bruce Wayne's alter ego.  Then some Chinese guy left a rather short (by short I mean rude) comment saying that I was uncool for having such a 'western' based question.  Of course I had just written about communist china banning my site and I did point out that anyone who didn't know who Batman is wouldn't probably want to read my site anyway!

So after that my 'hint' contained in the question was 'the answer is batman'.

Now I don't have one and just moderate.

[Lightening]

I used to have word verification on my site with the question who is Bruce Wayne's alter ego.  Then some Chinese guy left a rather short (by short I mean rude) comment saying that I was uncool for having such a 'western' based question.  Of course I had just written about communist china banning my site and I did point out that anyone who didn't know who Batman is wouldn't probably want to read my site anyway!

So after that my 'hint' contained in the question was 'the answer is batman'.

Now I don't have one and just moderate.

Well, I read and I would have NO IDEA the answer to that question.  Lucky you changed it eh?????  Wouldn't your life be soooooo boring without my very ocassional yet scintillating comments??????   

[Lee]

Well, I read and I would have NO IDEA the answer to that question.  Lucky you changed it eh?????  Wouldn't your life be soooooo boring without my very ocassional yet scintillating comments??????  

Arrrrrgggg don't know batman 

Got to go have a sit down.

[FormerAdmin]

So after that my 'hint' contained in the question was 'the answer is batman'.

Lee...

there is that old joke - if the answer is "cock robin", what is the question?

(Don't answer, this is a family show )

Cheers, Andrew

[Lee]

So after that my 'hint' contained in the question was 'the answer is batman'.

Lee...

there is that old joke - if the answer is "cock robin", what is the question?

(Don't answer, this is a family show )

Cheers, Andrew

 

I'm embarrassed to say I have no idea about the joke - it sounds like it's dirty so I really should 

[FormerAdmin]

I've already disgraced myself into one caution tonight for offering to spank someone, so I won't go there

Cheers, Andrew

[Anonymum]

So after that my 'hint' contained in the question was 'the answer is batman'.

Lee...

there is that old joke - if the answer is "cock robin", what is the question?

(Don't answer, this is a family show )

Cheers, Andrew

I'm not game to even hazard a guess at the question!!
 
I'll admit it rings a bell somewhere though...thinking, thinking....

[Sueblimely]

there is that old joke - if the answer is "cock robin", what is the question?

I looked up the answer on sickipedia but I am not telling. I would not recommend sickipedia either, which I did not know existed until I googled Andrew's question.

Back to the topic. Using Roboform to fill in comment forms with one click I find it a pain to have to fill in captchas - I understand the need for them on blogger though so it does not put me off leaving comments. Having to add the codes when I was posting to my own blogger blog was one of the annoyances that led me to Wordpress and own host. though.

[Ben Barden]

You may want to look at the Tan Tan Noodles spam filter plugin - it tells me - So far, this spam filter has blocked and rejected 27204 spam comments.

This is getting off-topic, but one of the main reasons I don't use WordPress is highlighted perfectly here: over-reliance on plugins.  I've dealt with that on vbulletin and ran into a lot of problems whenever I upgraded.

The spam problem is a big issue though.  You say that spammers adapt, and you modified the plugin to affect links.  What happens when spammers adapt to that?  Will this battle ever end?  That comment applies to all sites regardless of the system they use.  Is there a solution?

[clutterbells]

I have never had moderation or word verification and have not had much spam. I find verification a little annoying and captcha very irritating. Doesn't stop me commenting. I hate it when blogger blogs with many other screening tools also have verification.

Another comment gripe is on Wordpress with the spam thanks for commenting email. Yuch. Fair enough if it is personalised.

[Ben Barden]

I find verification a little annoying and captcha very irritating

Reading through this thread, I thought that "verification" was being used to refer to a CAPTCHA as well.  Do you mean email activation / email confirmation?  i.e. you can't get your comment approved until you click a link in your email?

CAPTCHA is the image with distorted letters where you have to type the letters to prove you're not a spam bot - isn't word verification the same?

[guera]

I find verification a little annoying and captcha very irritating

Reading through this thread, I thought that "verification" was being used to refer to a CAPTCHA as well.  Do you mean email activation / email confirmation?  i.e. you can't get your comment approved until you click a link in your email?

CAPTCHA is the image with distorted letters where you have to type the letters to prove you're not a spam bot - isn't word verification the same?

I read them as being the same in this thread, but I don't know that much about captcha.

I basically don't like any system where you have to decipher the distorted letters and enter them for your comment to be approved. I don't really mind it when my comment is in moderation. It's what I do on my blog with first time commenters and I don't find it too onerous (maybe I would if was getting bucket loads of comments  but its pretty manageable for me right now)

I used to go back and check on my comments to see if they were there and more to the point if there was a reply from the blog author, but I find I don't get as much time to do that now that I have a lot more blogs in my reader and comment on more around the place. I can't even remember where I've commented half the time!

[Snoskred]

The spam problem is a big issue though.  You say that spammers adapt, and you modified the plugin to affect links.  What happens when spammers adapt to that?  Will this battle ever end?  That comment applies to all sites regardless of the system they use.  Is there a solution?

We could ask Dexter to hunt them down..

Seriously though, I do not think there is any solution. There will always be spam. We just have to find ways of stopping it. And yes, spammers adapt - they always have and they always will, but we can adapt too.

[Lani]

This is getting off-topic, but one of the main reasons I don't use WordPress is highlighted perfectly here: over-reliance on plugins.  I've dealt with that on vbulletin and ran into a lot of problems whenever I upgraded.

I have only ever used self-hosted wordPress, so I'm ignorant about the strengths of other platforms, but my impression is that the over-reliance on plugins is based on users, not the platform itself.  The codex is very flexible and easy to work with, which make your data and design very flexible (imo).  Even for people like me who came to it less than a year ago with no coding knowledge at all.

There are some absolutely brilliant plugins available, but the "market" is glutted with duplicate and unecessary bells and whistles.  The problem is they are too temptingly easy to install. 

I like Snosk's approach - that she has to be able to "justify" the use of a plugin first, and that it needs to be thoroughly tested as well.  Most of the things people need can be done through the theme template, which is less vulnerable to incompatibilities when upgraded, and easier to update if necessary.