Word verification for comments is now enabled. I hate doing this. I have resisted it for almost five years. I could handle it when the spam comments only averaged about ten a day, but this week some ass-clown has been bombarding me with about a hundred a day, and I just can't stand it anymore. It appears that a bot is going through my archives and trying to submit a comment (there's a rotating list of maybe 20 generic comments) on every single one of them, and it's driving me crazy. I'm really sorry to add to the difficulty of posting a comment for the rest of you, but I don't know of any other way to stop it.
Friday, July 01, 2011
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9 comments:
I guess that happens when you're The Poker Grump.
Word verification is xlingo.
Stupid question...How does word verification halt this kind of behavior?
Anon: Why should I answer if it's a stupid question? For that matter, why would you ask a stupid question? Are you a stupid person?
I don't think it's a stupid question, but as long as you do, I won't waste time answering it. If you decide to ask again, this time without the assertion that it's a stupid question, you're likely to get your answer.
It is a very minor inconvenience to type in a short word verification so I do not understand why doing this upsets you at all.
I did hear of an operation that worked around word verification by having a site featuring attractive women where they would automatically put up the graphics they wanted to crack and each time what the user put in worked for them, a picture of the model would be shown with one less item of clothing.
By the way, can I interest you in buying a convincing fake Rolex? Impress your friends!
anon...it helps by making a human have to type in a "password", per se, in order to have a comment submitted. without this, any bot can spam a website.
Since I was the Anonymous writer who prefaced my last post with "Stupid question", I'm kind of floored that my attempt at being self-deprecating would evoke such a negative response from you, Rakewell. I've been a loyal reader of your blog for years and am totally taken aback by this response...I was trying to preface my computer/blog ignorance, not be literal that I'm "stupid", but that the question could be perceived as such by more sophisticated computer types.
Thomas, thanks for the answer.
I'm sorry if my comment seemed to be attacking you. My intention was the opposite--to try to get you to be nonapologetic and unembarrassed about asking questions.
There are stupid questions, but most are not. I would say it's a stupid question if it's something that I just answered and you weren't reading carefully, or if it's something that there's some reason that you should already know. In this case, neither applies. I can't think of why you or anybody else should automatically know how word verification thwarts spammers.
As was already said, at least so far the automatic spamming bots aren't capable of reading the distorted typefaces used in word verification images. A real human can pass the test, but it takes time and slows them down. The most annoying spam comments come from automated bots that submit them in mass quantities, and word verification mostly stops them from succeeding, and therefore keeps me from having to review dozens of messages a day to publish or send to the trash.
My advice: Don't ask stupid questions, and don't label ordinary, non-stupid questions as stupid questions. The fact that you don't know something doesn't make it a stupid question--it just makes it a question.
Touche, Rakewell. Thanx for clarifying. Keep up the great work...BTW, how do I get out of "Anonymous" status? Can I do so by just signing in off my Google Account?
I think so. (I can't really check that, because the system recognizes me as the blog owner, so I can't replicate your experience.)
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