To deal with the increasing spam–yes, it has gotten worse since I noted it the other day–I have temporarily enabled a function that will not allow a first-time commenter to comment without my approval.
If you have had an approved comment here before, it should work as always.* If you are trying to comment for the first time, your comment will go into a queue. Please do not re-post; I will get to it when I can. And, I will warn you that I may accidentally delete a legitimate comment, as I am getting 100 or more comments in the moderation queue a day. Sometimes I just bulk-delete them, but I will try to be careful and look for any that should be cleared and allowed to post.
I am hoping this measure is one I can suspend before too long, once I get the new Word Press installed, or a better spam-protection plug-in.
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* And I hope that spam that the filter has let through, but I have subsequently marked as spam or simply deleted, does not count as an “approved comment.” This is a test.
Thanks for weeding the garden, even if it’s not the most pleasant task. If you need a hand with WordPress, I’m certainly willing to help.
Seed planted by Vasi — 11 November 2009 @ 03:57
More than likely, the problem is not Akismet (or Bad Behavior), but the way your version of WP handles information going to and from the database. It might not hurt to run this plugin. It should tell you what spam you’ve missed and, more important, whether any evil scripts (or calls to them) are lingering in your file system or DB.
Seed planted by Jack — 11 November 2009 @ 13:54
51 new spam comments in moderation overnight. At least none of them made it through to be seen by orchard visitors.
Seed planted by MSS — 11 November 2009 @ 14:59
74 more weeds tossed into the compost pile this morning.
Seed planted by MSS — 12 November 2009 @ 15:03