Blog Comments Problem Solved

I’ve found that Akismet gives that blank page error on posting now (with WP 2.0.7). The Akismet guys said they addressed the bug, but the new version still gives me the same problem.

Re-enabling Akismet even after it’s been deactivated reveals the spams that have been coming in and that it’s trapping them even though the plugin is disabled, which is almost a miracle! Moreover, it revealed several false positives that I had to de-spam…

Really not sure what’s going on.

Thanks Michael. I will try it out.

There’s a new release of Bad Behavior out which should address your issue of false positives, especially from various South Asian countries (it has a strict mode, which you want to disable to allow this traffic).

Combined with Akismet, you should no longer see 3000 spams a day

Thomas,

Thanks for the heads-up.

Best,
Angsuman

Just wanted to give you a heads up.. at 12:17 PM eastern time I got a “cannot connect to database error” when trying to access your page..

probably just a fluke but thought i should let you know

James,

Shh
Though I have to admit things are slowing down a bit for unknown reasons.

You have convinced me wrt. Akismet. I will definitely try it.

BTW: I noticed after eliminating wp-hashcash, I have started getting lots of legitimate comments. It appears wp-hashcash was eating (due to the bug you found) much more than just illegitimate comments.

Angsuman, you make $500 or more per moth off of Simple Thoughts?! You lucky blogger. As for third-party control, there really isn’t much there. The Akismet server evaluates each incoming comment for spam content. Comments marked as “spam” by the plugin are still stored in your database for fifteen days and viewable in a log interface. If you find a comment incorrectly marked as “spam”, just hit the “not spam” button to post it on your blog and submit to Akismet for re-evaluation and system education, and visa-versa for any spam comments that get past the plugin. Architecturally, Akismet seems like the best available anti-spam solution. The effect of the community contribution to the spam evaluating engine leads to comment spam floods being stopped across the internet in a matter of seconds. According to the Akistmet engine, there have been “4,242,796 spams caught so far, 63,824 so far today, [and] 81% of all comments are spam.” But, if you can’t or don’t want to use Akismet, Bad Behavior and a good moderation list should keep you spam-free.

Thomas, Bad Behavior shouldn’t be blocking any well-established and properly-coded legitimate bots. Bad Behavior compares existing legitimate bots to their IPs and known behavior patterns. For example, Bad Behavior will block a bot with the Googlebot user agent only if it came from a non-Google IP and/or it is not following the Googlebot’s behavior pattern. If you are concerned, just check Bad Behavior’s log each day. For more information, look for the commented fields inside each of Bad Behavior’s files.

I am not sure why, but I chmoded the file wp-hashcash.key to 666 and the database errors seem to be gone and I can access all my blogs pages fine now..

I may use bad behavior eventually but I am a bit concerned about it blocking legitimate bots like google and yahoo etc.

James,

Thanks.

I have two issues with Akismet.
Firstly I do not fall under their narrow definition of non-commercial blog

Secondly I somehow feel hesitant to hand over the control of my comments to third-party. Just from an architectural point it appears incorrect.

Good choice!

I should also mention that I have received absolutely no false positives during the past two months in which I have been using both Bad Behavior and Akismet. So, if you ever get tired of managing your moderation list, try adding Akismet to your mix.

> Bad Behavior is never pleased by false positives, some spam comments do pass by its defenses

I would support the Bad Behavior approach of focussing on eliminating false positives at the cost of letting few spams through. It is better than the overly aggresive approch of SpamKarma.

So Bad Bahavior it is then

I have been using Bad Behavior for almost a year now. It’s an excellent plugin and very effective at stopping bandwidth-wasting and email-harvesting bots as well as comment and trackback spam bots. Since the developer of Bad Behavior is never pleased by false positives, some spam comments do pass by its defenses. Once WordPress 2.0 was released about two months ago, I decided to add Akismet as a second layer of spam protection, and MacManX.com has been 100% spam-free ever since.

No. I have stopped using HashCash. I still have first comment moderation on. So hopefully (unless the spammer uses the exploit mentioned in this post) I will get a chance to moderate the comments before it appears on the site.

If I start getting too many spams, as before, I will opt for Bad Behavior plugin. I have heard good words about it from James Huff aka MacManx.

I noticed the same strange database errors when using the 3.0 beta version of hashcash..

so now you are not using hashcash at all?

doesnt that mean you will get a flood of comment spam?

I am not sure now what I should use as a spam prevention solution.. maybe I should go back to the older version of hashcash..